


Dreams of Steel and Bone

by laventadorn



Category: Zootopia (2016)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Interspecies Relationship(s), Mystery, Slow Burn, borrowing from Pratchett's Discworld
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-11
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-06-01 14:15:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 40,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6523459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laventadorn/pseuds/laventadorn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a new mayor in office and an old girlfriend back in town, and Nick knows better than to trust either of them. They’re <i>probably</i> unconnected with the mole that’s turned up dead in the Natural History Museum, at least, even if nobody knows who’d want to kill the poor guy. Of course, Judy has to be at the center of everything -- which means that Nick does, too, whatever happens. And then, one morning early into all of this business, Nick wakes up with Judy in his arms, on the wrong side of his life.</p>
<p>It starts when a bathtub crashes through Judy’s ceiling.</p>
<p>
  <b>**ABANDONED. Read at your own risk.</b>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Bathtub Incident

**Author's Note:**

> "Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else."  
> -Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

There was a world beyond Zootopia – a whole, wide one, in fact. A world where ice had ruled unchecked for countless millennia; a world commanded by the pull of the tide and the crushing heartbeat of the sea; a world where the mountains burned with white-gold fire in the light of the rising sun; where the ancient forests reigned in the cold and the heat; where the winds changed and what once had blossomed green and vibrant burned to dust and desert.

The world beyond Zootopia had given birth to Zootopia. The bunnies and the foxes, the polar bears and the shrews, the lions and the lambs, the cheetahs and the buffalo – all the citizens of Zootopia had once come from some place else; had, at some definable point in the past, come together and crafted a world that sanded the wide, untameable, thrilling and terrifying world down to something called _civilization_.

Sometimes, Zootopia forgot the rest of the world, as the mind forgets the waking world while it dreams. Sometimes, Zootopia awoke and remembered. But as fast as it could, the dream of civilization reasserted itself.

The world beyond Zootopia never forgot. The world beyond watched Zootopia – sometimes in its own fevered dream of civilization, sometimes through the indifference of mountains and oceans. Some, like Judy Hopps, had wanted nothing more than to be a part of it. Others wanted to remake themselves in its image or to remake Zootopia in theirs.

And some wanted to tear it apart.

* * *

Judy’s side of her shared cubicle at the ZPD had very little in it. She liked to keep things simple, uncluttered. On her side, she kept a picture of her parents and one-hundred-seventy-five of her siblings (the other one-hundred-fourteen had their own families and wouldn’t have fit) in a trifold frame, a calendar on which she marked off the days and penciled in important dates, a Gazelle snow globe, and the Invitations.

They were simple: embossed black print on white. One had her name on it, the other, Nick’s. The type was slim and narrow, almost no adornment: just a thin black band around the white edges. She caught herself looking up at the Invitations as she worked, wondering why she felt like she should be learning something from them; something beyond a time, a date, a place, and politics.

“It’s embarrassing for you to have mine, too,” Nick said from behind her. His voice was thick, meaning his Clawhauser Snack Run had yielded fruit. Or, rather, donuts.

“You dribbled jam on yours and stuck it in a drawer,” Judy said absently. She stuck the last full-stop on her report, saved the document, and nudged her foot against her desk to swivel around in her chair and face him. Sure enough, Nick had cleared a space in his mounds of workforce detritus for a plate of chocolate-covered jam donuts (with sprinkles).

“Are you part hummingbird?” she asked. “Because you seem to subsist entirely on nectar.”

“I can’t be having with all that green food you eat, Carrots,” he said, licking chocolate off a claw.

Nick had a ritualistic way of eating sweets, and jam-filled chocolate-covered donuts with sprinkles were particularly complex. First, he’d bite out a careful segment, then suck out the jam. Then he’d alternate between nipping at the bottom glaze and the top chocolate portions – delicately, not dropping any sprinkles – making sure to save a chunk of chocolate for the last bite. The first time she’d witnessed the Doughnut Ritual, she’d sat in mesmerized silence for the ten minutes it had taken him to polish it off. (Chief Bogo had ordered him not to eat donuts in front of him, threatening Nick with a citation for indecent exposure if he ever had to watch it again.) Even now, she felt compelled to wait until he’d found the right place to bite into the donut. He was currently turning it around in his paws, as if looking for the perfect spot.

He narrowed his eyes at the Invitations on her wall. “Every time Bogo comes over here he looks at it. And then he looks at _me_. I swear, it’s the only time he cares about anything, and he uses those ten seconds to judge me.”

“I judge you every time I turn around and see the mess you make.”

“It’s comfortable mess.” He patted one of his piles of papers, which shifted like a rumbling avalanche looking for a valley to crush. “Your pristine nothingness over there makes me feel empty inside.”

“Is that why you pack away five donuts every hour?”

“You know,” he said, ignoring this, “after the inauguration’s over, you’re going to have to take those invites down. One more day, Carrots.”

“One more day and we’ll be _at_ the inauguration.” She smiled. “Then I’ll have _pictures_.”

He almost looked too horrified to eat his donut. Almost. But then, with a narrow-eyed look of revenge, he started draining the jam as obnoxiously as he could.

Judy swiveled her chair nonchalantly back around and folded her arms, gazing up at the Invitations again.

She wondered what the new mayor would be like, and couldn’t shake the feeling that the Invitations were answering that question for her.

“Wilde!” Grizzoli growled over the top of their cubicle from the other side, where he worked. His claws gripped the cubicle edge, and Judy was sure his tail was lashing. Nick didn’t look fazed. “If you don’t _knock that off_ I’m going to the Chief—“

“You’re going to _tell on me_?” Nick smirked up at him.

“If it stops you making that damn noise, you can bet I am.” Grizzoli’s mane disappeared behind the frosted plexiglass as he dropped back into his seat. “Eat the damn donut like a civilized animal.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” Nick said, but he looked pleased with himself.

“Don’t know how Hopps puts up with it,” Grizzoli rumbled.

“I have three hundred and four siblings,” Judy said.

Silence wafted over the cubicle as Grizzoli processed this. Then he groaned. “Have you issued him a _challenge_? To be more annoying than all of them put together?”

“I don’t need a challenge, Cannoli,” said Nick, popping the last bite of doughnut between his teeth. “I make them on my own.”

“That’s not a virtue,” Grizzoli growled. He poked a paw above the cubicle again to point a claw down at Nick. “And stop calling me _Cannoli_ , Red.”

Nick just started slurping at another donut, because he had an odd way of making friends: he nearly made enemies instead. So it was a good thing that Judy’s phone rang just then, or else the next citation Chief Bogo gave might have been for homicide instead of indecency to donuts.

A number Judy didn’t recognize flashed up on her screen, but she answered it anyway. “Judy Hopps speaking,” she said, and saw Nick rolling his eyes at her with a slight lilt of a smile. (He always answered his phone with fake business names – “Little Cheetah’s Pizzareia, Oryx and Crate’s, Baskin Rabbit’s” – even when he knew it was Judy calling.)

“ _Hey, Hopp-along_ ,” said a voice that it took her a moment to peg as belonging to her next door neighbor, Bucky. “ _A bathtub fell through your ceiling_.”

Judy didn’t know what her face did, but Nick actually set his donut down.

“ _Oy, Hopps_?” she heard Bucky say. “ _You hear me, Hopps?”_

“ _You idiot_!” she heard Pronks shout. Nick leaned forward, cocking an ear toward the phone to listen. “ _You shouldn’t have told her like that!”_

“ _Shut up! You told me to make the call when the landlady fainted!”_

_“_ You _shut up!”_

_“No,_ you _shut up!”_

Judy put a paw over her eyes. She heard Nick snort, but when she looked at him he had composed his face.

“I’ll go tell the Chief we need to step out for a bit,” he said.

* * *

Bogo let them borrow a squad car and gave them an hour. On the ride to Judy’s apartment, Nick sighted approximately twenty-seven things that should have made her smile, none of which got even a twitch. He’d seen her ears drooping further, but they were still pretty low.

He would refrain from pointing out that she lived in a dump and was lucky the bathtub hadn’t come down on her head, say, while she was sleeping or heating up one of those sad frozen carrot packs. The microwave wasn’t even in her room but down the hall, and she had to share a bathroom with those two antlered morons, a married pair of missionary beavers, a cantankerous badger, and a panda who always took about two hours in there. He half-suspected that Judy didn’t really understand the concept of moving, so he told her at least twice a week that she ought to find someplace better. She’d lived in a warren with her parents and three hundred siblings her entire life before coming to Zootopia; leases, to her mind, seemed to be nearly sacred contracts. Or perhaps that was just Judy’s respect for the letter of the law. All of Nick’s attempts to explain loopholes fell deaf on those oversized ears. Sometimes he worried that Judy _wanted_ to live there, down the hall from the tone-deaf panda who tried to sing opera in the shower, next door to those shouting idiots.

Judy parked the squad car in an open slot and dutifully dropped change in the parking meter. Nick raised his eyes to the heavens but didn’t say anything. Hm, dark clouds were blowing in -- from the mountains. Those storms were colder and harsher than the ones that blew in from the sea.

An old-fashioned keypad let them in through the front door. Judy’s building manager lived on the ground floor at the end of the hall; her door stood open and Nick heard moaning and murmuring voices. Judy hesitated at the foot of the stairs, but Nick draped an arm over her shoulders and guided her away from temptation. He didn’t like that armadillo, and he was sure she would find some way to demand _Judy_ do something about the hole in the ceiling.

When they climbed to her floor and looked inside her apartment, Judy’s ears drooped as low as that time her mother had come down with a bad case of Hen Flu.

“That is most definitely a bathtub through your ceiling,” said Nick.

“Yes, Nick, thank you,” Judy said, and he grimaced lightly behind her back. Being unhelpful was usually his thing, but there usually weren’t bathtubs lying in a heap of rubble in the middle of what had once been Judy’s apartment. The place was a wreck. With a bathtub and a lot of ceiling in the middle of it.

“How did that happen, anyway?” He leaned over her to peer through the hole in the ceiling without stepping into the room itself. Yellow caution tape stretched across the open doorway, but he knew better than to step on a floor that might well cave in like the ceiling had. The bathtub could have held both the panda neighbor and anyone he might invite in for a midnight sing-a-long. “That doesn’t look like a bathroom up there.”

“Illicit bathtub,” said one of Judy’s loud neighbors. Nick knew they were named Pronks and Bucky, but he preferred to call them Bonks and Pucky and he hadn’t actually bothered to learn which was really which. “Not supposed to have it.”

Nick could tell by Judy’s expression that she was thinking, ‘ _Yes, that’s what illicit means_ ,’ but was too polite to say it, even after a bathtub had crushed her bed.

“Water damage,” added Bucky-or-Pronks. “Weakened the floor.”

“It’s the _ceiling_ , idiot,” said Pronks-or-Bucky.

“It’s both, _you_ idiot—”

“Is Dharma all right?” Judy asked before they could start up again. Nick wished he hadn’t left his bag of Berry Poppers in the car; dealing with Judy’s neighbors required something to crunch.

“Paramedics gave her some oxygen.”

“She’s been moaning about lawsuits and contractors since she came around.”

“And demanding you arrest the ferret.”

_Bingo_ , thought Nick.

“He hasn’t been home.”

“She thinks he skipped town.”

“And stole her grandmother’s jewelry.”

Judy was rubbing at her right temple.

“ _Did_ he steal her grandmother’s jewelry?” Nick asked, feeling cynical. Judy’s landlady always peered at him past the chain she kept stretched across her door; he doubted she trusted ferrets any more than foxes.

“Dunno.”

“Probably not.”

“She probably just forgot where she put it.”

“Well, tell her she’s perfectly welcome to come down to the station and file a report,” Nick said, as if she’d do any such thing. Give Judy an earful, maybe, and whoever was currently sitting with her, but bestir herself? Not likely.

He reached out to lift the caution tape. “In the meantime. . .”

“Nick!” Judy grabbed his sleeve. “You can’t go _in_ there, the floor probably isn’t stable.”

“Someone has to get your stuff.” Not that she had a lot: a few non-uniforms hanging on a rack, picture frames, an extremely fluffy blanket her mother had sent, and several copies of the Complete Ordinances of Zootopia: Historical and Current, because this was _Judy_.

Judy frowned at the rubble and didn’t let go of his sleeve. “I have everything essential on me. I can buy whatever I need for now.”

“That’s ridiculous,” he said, knowing full well that she hardly ever spent money frivolously. “Investments” and “sending money home” were her two main expenses, as evidenced by the pitiful state of her apartment – even when there wasn’t a panda-sized bathtub sitting in the middle of it. “Your clothes are right there. I can stick close to the wall.”

“ _No_ ,” Judy said, keeping an impressive iron grip on his arm. “Let’s just – get back to the station. Dharma can call me if she needs anything.” She turned to her idiot neighbors, who looked slightly disappointed that Nick wasn’t going to brave the bathtub-compromised apartment and possibly fall through the floor. “Thanks for all your help.”

“No problem, Hopp-along.”

“It was a bit of a problem. _As the Fur Turns_ was on when—”

“Would you shut _up_?”

“ _You_ shut up!”

Judy dragged Nick off before he could toss _them_ into the room to test the floor.

“Look on the bright side,” he said as they stepped out onto the sidewalk. He slid his shades up his snout; the afternoon sun gleamed blinding on the glass towers, even with the dark clouds gathering to the east. “They don’t live next door to _me_.”

“That’s not. . .” Judy stopped as his meaning caught up to her. Her ears lifted, but not nearly all the way. “Nick, I—”

“If you say you can’t. . .” He reached into the squad car and pulled out the bag of Berry Poppers. “I will crunch every. Single. One of these. Right next to your ear. While you sleep. In whatever seedy motel you wind up in, since I know you’re not about to spend your wages on a _decent_ room.”

“There’s a threat to freeze the blood.” Her ears dropped again, but with relief, or possibly resignation. He’d got better at interpreting rabbit ear movements, but it was a complex system. “Thank you. It’s very—”

He pointed the bag of Berry Poppers at her. “If you say it’s _kind_ of me—”

“All right, all right.” She held up her paws in surrender, smiling slightly. Much better. She narrowed her eyes at the bag of Poppers. “But I do _appreciate_ —”

He tugged the bag open with a crunch and snagged a Popper between his claws.

“I take it back,” Judy said quickly, now definitely trying _not_ to smile. “I don’t appreciate it. I’m being coerced and I resent it. And you.”

“Much better,” he said, and tossed the Popper between his teeth with a minimum of crunching.

Judy’s nose twitched and her ears lifted – and then she groaned. “I’m going to need pajamas.”

“And a toothbrush.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like I should say something profound to close, but all I got is that I figure Judy must have a lot more than 275 siblings at this point. That's the number she had at age 9, and her parents seemed continually busy since then. 304 seems a pretty conservative estimate, as I type this...


	2. The Stranger at Home

Nick had been silent on the drive to her apartment -- not even crunching his way through that bag of Berry Poppers -- and his usual chatty self on the ride back to the station. In genial moods, he acquired odd blend of laconic and loquacious. Some folks filled a lot of space with nothing, but Nick filled minimal space with a lot, somehow or other.

She _was_ grateful for a place to stay, even if Nick wouldn’t let her say it. Her home had been wrecked, but she didn’t have to feel quite so down, now. (Considering that a bathtub through her ceiling had parted her from most of her worldly goods, it was a good thing the mayor’s inauguration tomorrow required her to be in uniform.) Though of course it was perfectly like Nick to put her up. If she’d thought ahead at all, she wouldn’t have felt even a twitch of surprise.

Speaking of twitching -- Clawhauser’s little ears perked up as she and Nick pushed through the revolving door into the airy atrium.

“Oh, Judy,” he said, “how _was_ it?”

“A bathtub through the ceiling, sure enough.”

“Thank goodness you weren’t _there_ when it _fell_ ,” he said, the fur on his tail prickling. “Bathtubs don’t fall through the ceiling in your apartment, do they, Nick?”

“Unlike Judy, I don’t live in a dump.” Nick gave her a sly look, as if to say, ‘ _See, here is empirical evidence that your apartment is terrible.’_ Well, he’d said as much at least twice a week since the first time visiting her apartment. She was more surprised he _hadn’t_ said it before now.

“How did you know I’m staying with Nick?” she asked instead of rising to Nick’s bait (or stepping on his tail, which was flicking smugly at her).

“Where else, Judy?” Clawhauser asked. She would have suspected him of irony if he hadn’t had a ironic bone in his body.

“Where else indeed, little guy.” Nick tossed a second bag of Berry Poppers up to him. “Finish those off for me, will you?”

“You’re a _prince_ , Nicky.” Clawhauser caught the bag out of the air with both paws. “Oh, and the Chief wants to see you – both of you.”

“So, not about the donuts, then,” Nick said as they skirted the reception desk.

“Maybe Grizzoli set fire to our desks while we were gone.”

“Nah. He likes _you_.”

He reached up and rapped an annoying rhythm on Bogo's office door.

"Come _in_ ," Bogo's voice said through the door, the way he might have said, "So shoot me and get it over with."

“ _You_ two,” Chief Bogo said without enthusiasm when Nick swung the door open. 

As she and Nick settled on the chair in front of his desk, Bogo treated them to his baleful look of default. (The expression he adopted when he felt a smile was necessary was a great deal more painful.) 

“ _Well_ , Hopps?” 

“Sir?” she asked, confused.

“The place is a complete wreck,” said Nick.

The Chief grunted. Judy blinked. Bogo asking after anything personal, even if it was a bathtub through the ceiling, was. . . surprising. He glared at them -- a simple, straightforward look on him, almost considering -- and then, with the air of abruptly changing gears, said:

“We need to talk about the damn inauguration ceremony tomorrow. You two are coming with me. In case you forgot, after being away from your bloody invitation for an hour.”

This was directly solely at Nick, who gave Judy a look that promised vengeance. Her nose twitched from suppressing a snort of laughter.

“Perhaps Hopps should be sitting on this side of the desk with me,” Bogo said. “Then Wilde might look in my direction, briefly, for this conversation.”

“You’re just too intimidating, Chief,” said Nick. “All of the big mammals are—”

“Wilde, _do shut it_  for at least a full minute.”

Judy could feel amusement radiating from Nick, though outwardly he seemed only politely attentive. She wasn’t sure if Chief Bogo could really pick up on Nick’s moods, but his drill-press glare said he’d interpreted it correctly either way. Nick said the Chief’s forehead and eyebrows were perfectly proportioned for glaring, and Judy had to agree.

“Tomorrow we will be representing the ZPD in front of the whole damn city,” said Bogo, as if he deeply regretted that his life choices had led him to this. “We are therefore going to present a united front if I have to threaten Wilde with bodily harm. We work together and _we like it._ Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir,” said Judy.

“ _Is that clear_ , Wilde?”

“My minute of silence isn’t up yet, Chief,” said Nick, and Judy couldn’t stop herself from kicking him. It was either that or laugh -- and the Chief could snap them like twigs. He’d definitely snap Nick first.

“ _Thank you_ , Hopps,” Bogo said, while Nick mouthed “ _police brutality_ ” at her as he rubbed his shin. “You’ll also be telling this new mayor, _if_ he asks, that you voted for him whether or not that’s a filthy stinking lie. _Is that clear?_ Wilde, just bloody nod.”

“Won’t be a problem, sir,” said Judy. “I did vote for Mayor Stoneclaw.”

Both Bogo and Nick stared at her.

“ _You_?” said Nick.

“I did do my research, you know,” Judy said. “He’s done a lot of good for the city.”

“He’s slick as monsoon season in the Rainforest District, I’ll give him that,” said Bogo. “As long as he’s not a raving psychopath or a fluff-brained patsy like the last two, we might hope to come out on top.”

“Don’t forget ol’ Snapcase, Chief,” said Nick. “He was. . . special.”

“Yes. The _original_ bloody raving psychopath,” Bogo said flatly. “United front, flattery -- Wilde will _pretend_ his mission in life isn’t to annoy the living daylights out of every mammal walking, and Hopps will not attempt to cite the new mayor for _anything_ , no matter what legal infraction he may commit at his own inauguration. Are these orders clear to you two?”

“Aye-aye, Chief,” Nick said, with a little salute.

A grinding noise issued from the Chief’s mouth. “We,” he said through clenched teeth. “Are meeting. In front of City Hall. At oh-eight-thirty tomorrow. Now _get out of my sight_ before I act _very inadvisably_ in a building with several hundred cops. And Hopps, if he gets his paws on another of those damn donuts today, arrest him.”

She made sure to shut the door after them, to give Bogo some spiritual solitude. Nick was looking pleased with himself, though that _was_ his default expression.

“They’re always out to spoil my fun,” he said.

“Driving their tails into knots _is_ your fun.”

“I concede your point,” Nick said with a gracious gesture. “Now. . .” He tugged lightly on one of her ears. “What’s this about you _voting for_ _Stoneclaw_?”

She batted his paw away. “I told you I was going to, back on election day.”

“I wasn’t listening.” He pulled a lollipop out of his pocket and peeled off the wrapper without causing maximum irritation to everyone in earshot -- for once. “Sorry, Carrots. You know how I feel about politics.”

She did know. She’d delivered impassioned monologues about the importance of voting as a civic duty, and Nick had pretended to sleep through each one. At some point, from someone else, Judy had learned that it was often difficult for foxes to register to vote -- their registration cards would routinely get lost or misdirected, and Nick himself hadn’t had an address till joining the ZPD. Then she had felt like a dumb bunny again, but she still didn’t think she was _wrong_. She couldn’t not care about who was running the city -- who would be responsible for it, beyond her fellow officers at the ZPD.

“I thought you’d vote for the sweet little red panda,” Nick said.

“I don’t pick mayoral candidates based on how sweet they look,” Judy said dryly.

“Fair enough. Bellwether’s doe-eyed fluffy look did hide the heart of a raving psychopath, as the Chief so wisely noted.” He gestured with his lollipop. “The thing is with politicians, they’re all the same. Look at Lionheart and Bellwether -- separately, each of their agendas was getting power and keeping hold of it. Lionheart _was_ a much better deal than Bellwether, I’ll grant you. She wanted to tear it apart to get to the top; he just liked being there.”

“So you’re saying that there’s no possibility that someone could want to protect Zootopia for _its_ sake -- only for theirs, and to stay in power,” she said doubtfully. _She_ didn’t believe it, but perhaps he did. In fact, it sounded like a very Nick thing to believe.

“More or less.” He slid the lollipop between his teeth. “Even if they start out with some high-minded civic duty, they all go that way in the end. And when you try to take the power away from them, they leave claw marks on what’s left.”

Judy turned this thought over in her mind, like Nick with one of his donuts.

They’d reached their shared cubicle. Nick slid up into his chair and kicked his feet up onto the edge of his desk, where the pile of paper had been nudged back for this exact purpose. He cast a wry glance at the invitations as he folded his arms behind his head, the handle of his lollipop protruding between his teeth.

“You mentioned Snapcase,” Judy said, hopping up onto her own chair, which was still much-larger-mammal height. “You were a kid when he was. . . in power, weren’t you?”

“When he went off the rails and a massive breakdown in law and order lead to mass panic and rioting?” Nick said around his lollipop. “Yep. The Chief was already on the force, I’m pretty sure. Judging by things he’s said.”

Judy had read about it, though all that had happened a couple of years before she was born. Nick must have been all of five years old at the time.

“He would’ve been a pretty green recruit at the time,” Nick said thoughtfully. “Wonder if there are pictures. . .”

“You might not live long past seeing them,” Judy said dryly.

“Madam,” he said with false solemnity, “I would have the self-preservation not to show him what I’d found.”

“You wouldn’t be able to resist for five minutes.”

“. . . I’ll have to concede that point, too.” He crunched the lollipop in half. “So, _pajama shopping_. Are we going to have to look all over town for something with a carrot print, or is there a rabbit-specific store where you get all of that?”

She took a piece of paper off his side of the desk and pretended to read it over. Then she balled it up and tossed it at his head. It hit him between the eyes. He flattened his ears and grinned.

* * *

Exercising heroic forbearance, Nick got through the rest of the day without annoying Grizzoli or Bogo to their cracking points, or to any point, really. Though in Grizzoli’s case, this was because he wasn’t at his desk the rest of the day. Irritating Grizzoli was all in good fun -- that, and, well, Nick enjoyed getting on lions’ nerves. He miight have harbored a little residual resentment of the “nobility” of what was, basically, just having a lot of extra fur on your head.

Bogo, though; that was. . . personal. Not in the way grudges were personal, but in the way that Nick knew how to carve out a space for himself in the order of things, and in the ZPD, under Bogo, that was getting on every last buffalo nerve. He was pretty sure that by now he’d made it to at least 75% of them, and he was gunning for the other 24%. That last one, he might leave, because Bogo _could_ snap him like a twig and throw him in a bush.

But he and Judy clocked out without another Bogo sighting. Nick tossed a Moo Pie at Clawhauser on their way out, because it never hurt to have someone unreservedly on your side. The way to Clawhauser’s loyalty was definitely through sweets. A good cat, ol’ Benji. Nick felt a camaraderie with any mammal who packed away as much sugar as himself.

“We can still go back to your apartment and get all your personal carrot-printed belongings, you know,” Nick said as they pushed through the revolving door onto the street. Late afternoon sunlight slanted between lower, darker clouds that had moved over the towers; the cool wind carried the smell of rain. The windows would probably rattle with thunder tonight.

Judy shook her head. Her ears had (thankfully) perked up in Bogo’s office, after Nick had gone out of his way to menace the Chief’s little inaugural briefing. It had once surprised him that rule-book-quoting Judy Hopps was not scandalized by his constant irreverence for authority, but he supposed it did fit: if Judy had been the type to respect authority at all costs, she’d still be sticking tickets on parked cars.

“It’s _fine_ ,” she said. “I’ll just grab a few things on the way to your place. It won’t take nearly as long as going all the way to my building and back to yours.”

“Are you sure? I know how you bunnies shop.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Judy said sweetly, which meant that she was going to make him pay for that. Probably when he’d forgotten all about it.

He looked forward to it.

Thunder was growling and the wind tossing old newspapers and wrappers down the sidewalk as they boarded the train for the last, longer trip to Nick’s side of town. Judy had stopped only two places: the first for clothes (taking practicality to masochistic levels, she’d bought a set of t-shirts in a _bag_ ), the second a drugstore for a travel kit with a toothbrush. In fact, the longest part of the shopping expedition had been the commute, the train packed with cranky mammals at rush hour. Nick managed to steal a seat from a lumbering hippo, which earned him and Judy a mint-condition filthy look, but the two of them took up only one seat; the hippo would have taken two.

Even on the train, Nick kept his sunglasses on, to better mammal watch. They didn’t know what to think when they saw a fox cop wearing sunglasses. Their ideas ( _shifty, untrustworthy, plotting as we speak; police, civil servant, is that a bunny with him_ ) got crossed.

“Mountain storm,” Judy said absently, resting her head against his bicep, her gaze drifting out the window. He shifted his shoulders down the back of the chair to give her a more comfortable headrest. An antelope shot them a vaguely scandalized look, but Judy didn’t notice.

The train lights flickered as the cars rattled through a tunnel, winding out of Sahara Square toward the Marshlands. Nick preferred the dry warmth of Sahara Square. He’d lived there most of his adult life, but property was at a premium there. As a con-fox, he could hole up in the basement of an abandoned factory, but as a cop he needed less of a rat hole. An old associate had made him a deal on a place in the Marshes, where at least he didn’t live in an eternal downpour like the Rainforest District or freeze his tail off in Tundra Town.

But that evening, rain was already drifting in curtains down the green mountainside as he and Judy disembarked at his stop. Streetlamps glinted on the lush slopes, all color bled away in the gathering dark of the storm.

“What d’you think?” he asked, tucking his sunglasses into his breast pocket. “Eat at Don’s where it’s dry and hope the downpour doesn't catch us after, or try and beat the rain with takeout?”

A jagged ripple of lightning broke the sky and thunder cracked down, making them both flatten their ears. Judy winced.

“I’m changing my vote to ‘mad dash and ordering in,’” Nick said.

“I elect that idea,” Judy said.

They scampered from the station to the Climbing Cars. Like the Sky Tram in the Rainforest District, the Marshlands had their system of getting their residents up the mountainside if cars on the twisting roads were beyond their means. The Climbing Cars went straight up and down instead of across. Rain dinged on the metal roof as he and Judy clambered into one, drumming by the time they were at his level.

“See what I mean?” He had to raise his voice so she could hear him over the rain. “Whether you vote for Eat Now or Takeout or Mad Dash, you still get wet!”

“Tell that joke tomorrow at the inauguration and see what color Chief Bogo turns!” she said as the car lurched to a stop.

Nick rented one half of a duplex that hung off the mountainside in two tiers. After skidding down the slippery steps that led from the street to the house, he and Judy dripped onto the covered porch while he tried to peel his keys out of his sodden pocket.

"Turns out that your t-shirts in bags were a good buy," he said. "That's gonna be the only thing we're bringing in the front door that isn’t soaking wet."

“Nick?” He could hear the frown in her voice before he looked up. “Did you leave your light on this morning?”

“I’d never waste. . . money like that.” Yet his kitchen light was most definitely on.

His fur would have prickled if it hadn’t been waterlogged flat against his skin.

“Finnick, maybe?” Judy asked in a low voice almost swallowed by the thunder.

“Well,” he said, keeping his own voice light, “at least if they were planning to be unfriendly, I doubt they’d announce themselves by leaving on the lights.”

He finally got his keys out and unlocked the front door. He stayed deliberately in front of Judy. A clever, resourceful bunny cop she might be, but he was still bigger and his claws were sharper.

Which was why Judy ran into his back with an _oof_. She hadn’t expected him to stop, clearly. He hadn’t expected it either. He certainly hadn’t expected to see who he was currently seeing, curled up on his couch and idly watching his TV, as if three years hadn’t gone by since he’d last seen her.

Aurelia glanced up and smiled absently. “Hi, Nicky.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -Dang, thanks for the comments and kudos! ♥︎
> 
> -In Terry Pratchett's Discworld, there was a nasty ruler named Lord Snapcase who went off the deep end, resulting in, you guessed it, a massive breakdown in law and order (full story told in the book 'Night Watch').
> 
> -As you probably know, early drafts of Zootopia that still revolved around Nick gave him a truly depressing apartment for him in a crappy basement. I've just used that idea.


	3. Romantic Entanglements

“ _Oof_.”

Judy peeled her face off Nick’s back; wet fur and wet clothes really stuck together. She realized she was standing on his tail and hopped off -- but he didn’t even twitch. He’d just frozen in the doorway, no more than two steps inside.

“Hi, Nicky,” said a voice from inside his apartment. It was definitely not Finnick’s voice. It was female -- a smoke and whiskey voice, the kind that belonged to those old noir films Nick pretended he didn’t like.

The smoke-and-whiskey girl’s voice didn’t _sound_ threatening, but Nick still hadn’t moved.

Judy put a paw on his arm and he jumped. His green gaze flicked over his shoulder, and he looked -- almost relieved. But then an all-too-familiar look shuttered over his face: one she hadn’t seen since Bellwether had gone behind bars.

“Get in here,” he said shortly, scooping Judy inside and finally giving her a good look at the visitor.

 _She_ was an arctic fox: bigger than Judy, smaller than Nick, with a tail almost as big as she was. Her eyes were a startling black against her white fur. She looked completely comfortable, lounging on Nick’s sofa with the TV playing. As Nick slammed the door -- Judy winced -- the arctic fox sat up and clicked the remote at the screen, turning it off.

“Quite the storm we’re having, isn’t it?” she said, as if they’d all known each other for years.

“What,” Nick growled, actually growled, “the hell are you doing here?”

Judy glanced between him and the arctic fox, who did not look perturbed by the curl of his shoulders or the snarl in his voice. Judy, however, was worried. It took a lot to make Nick truly angry, but it had happened now by _sight_.

“I was back in town,” said the arctic fox. Her voice could have belonged to a much bigger animal; it was deep, almost hoarse. “Finn said you’d turned cop. I said I didn’t believe it.” She shrugged, her snout crinkling with a light smile. “But unless you two are part of a costume act. . . I’m Aurelia,” she said to Judy, putting out her paw to shake. “Aurelia Winters.”

“Judy Hopps--” was all Judy got out before Nick growled and swept between them, knocking Aurelia’s paw out of the way. She looked unfazed.

“I,” Nick said with emphasis that reminded Judy of snapping his lollipop in half, “am getting _towels_.”

He stalked into his bedroom, through which the bathroom was reached. His tail left a wet trail on the parquet floor where it dragged behind him.

Once he was gone, Aurelia shook her head and smiled at Judy.

“Umbrellas aren’t standard police issue?” she asked.

“Not as such -- though right now I'm really wishing they were.” Judy really wanted to wring out her ears, but she’d wait till Nick returned with the towels.

Think of the devil and he’d appear: Nick stuck his head out his bedroom door. “Hopps,” he said, ignoring Aurelia.

“Excuse me,” Judy said to her. Aurelia smiled and sat back down on the couch.

“What?” Judy hissed as Nick shut his bedroom door behind her. A wooden screen set high into the wall made any real privacy impossible.

“You go.” He waved at the bathroom. “Dry off. I’ll -- get rid of her.”

Judy eyed him. He wasn’t looking at her, glaring off at nothing instead. His ears were tucked down and his toes were curled into the rug. Judy had no personal experience with this sort of thing, but she did have three hundred siblings, and some things were just common sense.

“All right,” she said quietly. She put a paw on his arm as she moved past him, let it rest there until she was out of reach. She slid the bathroom door shut behind her, dropped her shopping bag on the tile floor, and started stripping off her wet uniform. The rain thrumming on the roof made the only sound.

At least a full minute had gone by before she heard Nick’s bedroom door open and snap shut again.

* * *

Nick put his paw over the place on his arm where Judy’s had rested. In the dark bedroom, he closed his eyes and breathed in through his nose.

God _damn_ Aurelia. Just when he’d been pulling his shit together --

 _Goddamn you_, he thought furiously. _You aren’t backsliding this time. If only because then you’ll have to explain everything to Judy._

He could hear her rustling in the bathroom, though only faintly past the steady drum of the rain. Thunder rumbled at the walls, and his wet fur was starting to chill him.

He pulled off his uniform shirt, undershirt, pants, the whole lot, and dragged a towel over his fur before pulling on dry clothes. They’d be damp before long; he hadn’t done a thorough job.

Part of him was hoping Aurelia would take a hint and fluff off without him having to throw her out -- but that wasn’t her style. She’d turned the damn TV on again, for the love of God.

He glared at his bedroom door, took one last fortifying breath, and twisted the knob.

Chin resting on her paw, Aurelia glanced up as he stalked back into the main room. She tapped a claw against the remote switch off the TV again.

He held onto his anger because it was easier to be angry with than accept he was an idiot. He was most decidedly pathetic for being so relieved that Judy was here, because it meant he had an excuse not to cave.

“This is a nice place, Nicky,” Aurelia said, sounding sincere. “I’m guessing there’s a good view when it’s not raining.”

There was. Three long windows ran across the wall, facing over the Marshlands toward the glass spires of downtown. On really clear days, you could see the glint of the bay edging Sahara Square. Now, the view was just a lot of black glass, their fur the only spots of color, hers silver and his a dull russet.

He had no idea if he wished Judy would hurry up and save him or take her time and spare him a little bit of humiliation.

“What are you doing here, Aurelia?” It came out sounding tired. He hadn’t expected that. Where was the comforting anger?

“I always look you up when I get back, Nicky, you know that.” She was combing her claws through her tail. She looked the same; she always did.

“So you _haven’t_ been back in the last three years.”

“There’s a whole wide world out there to play in, Nicky.”

“So I’ve heard.” Some sharper instinct, one that bordered on mean, made him add, “I’ve only been as far as Bunnyburrow.”

Aurelia didn’t look fazed, but then, it would probably take a geological scale disaster to faze Aurelia (and even then, he wasn’t so sure). “Is that where Judy’s from?”

It was stupid to get his hackles up at Aurelia talking about Judy. He’d brought her into the conversation, after all. And Aurelia wouldn’t be cruel or snide; that wasn’t her way.

“She has three hundred siblings,” he said, which was completely unrelated to anything. “They’re all in Bunnyburrow, too.”

Aurelia wore an expression that Grizzoli probably had, earlier. Maybe not a geological disaster, then. But a moment later, her considering listening expression was back and pristine. “That must be a lot of names to remember. But you’ve always been good at that sort of thing.”

“Right. I know everyone.” He folded his arms and leaned back against his dining table. Judy still hadn’t come out of the bathroom. At least she hadn’t heard him prattling about her family. “Finn told you where to find me, did he?”

“As a matter of fact, no.” She shrugged, with one of her trademark smiles: light, like a layer of snow. As a con fox, Nick had always been rather obvious; Aurelia was subtle. “I always know who to talk to when I come back, Nicky. You know me.”

“Information, then? We’re getting a new mayor tomorrow,” he said shortly. 

“ _That’s_ gone all the way up the Spine. Even the Under King knows.”

“The _moles_ are interested in something happening above ground?”

“Did I say that?” She flicked an ear in gentle admonishment: ‘ _Expecting me to give away too much, Nicky,’_ that flick said. “But yes. Everyone’s got their eye on this one -- after what happened with the last one.”

Nick rubbed a paw across his jaw, scruffing up his fur. He didn’t like the sound of that at all. He pictured the invitations on Judy’s side of the cubicle. The entire ZPD had been sent a message of welcome, but only he and Judy had been _invited_.

A cynical voice inside his head said that he and Judy were the easiest to spare. Other cops were needed to fight crime, and the rabbit and the fox, well, surely the _little_ crimes could go unsolved for half a day. But another voice, one he’d always listened to -- a voice that could see in the dark and hear when his heart was pounding so loud it drowned out everything else -- that voice was telling him it was something . . . big. Something that would make waves, if only eventually.

He looked up. Aurelia was watching him, all smiles gone. That polite, friendly mask she’d been wearing when he’d walked in had disappeared, too.

“Why?” he asked. “Why the interest?”

“It’s Zootopia, Nicky. Center of the world.”

He snorted. “Right. The cradle of civilization.”

Her expression flickered to something he couldn’t read. Well, he was out of practice. “Something like that.”

Thunder made the glass buzz. He was out of quips, and whatever Aurelia had come there for (three guesses would be overdoing it), she didn’t seem keen to broach. She wasn’t leaving though, either.

She sighed, then, like he was being difficult. “Fine, Nicky, I’ll bite. Judy seems nice.”

His hackles rose whether he wanted them to or not. “Judy _is_ nice.”

“Defensive,” Aurelia murmured. “That answers my next question.”

“What question?” he snapped.

“Whether it’s what it looks like.”

“What’s what looks like what?”

“What?” she said, confused.

“ _What_ ,” he growled.

Aurelia rolled her eyes. “You’re crankier than normal.”

“You barged into my house uninvited.”

“I always do that, Nicky. But, like I said,” she stood from the couch, fluffing out her tail, “I can see how things are--”

“ _What_ things?” Nick threw up his paws.

“You’re the cop. I’m sure you can figure it out,” Aurelia said.

Now he knew how Chief Bogo felt, always fighting the urge to bite through a two-by-four.

“Judy?” Aurelia called, knocking on his open bedroom door. “I’m taking off. I just wanted to say good-bye.”

The bathroom door slid open and Judy, now wearing a plain lavender t-shirt and a pair of soft gray pants, poked her head out. “Already? It’s still pouring, though!”

“I’ll find a way to keep dry,” Aurelia said. “It was lovely meeting you.” She held out her paw again and that time Nick didn’t get between them. If Aurelia was leaving, that was a good thing for him. If only he’d managed to get rid of her himself for once.

“You, too,” said Judy, smiling as they shook paws.

Aurelia pulled on a black trench coat and arranged a hood over her ears. With a wave, she let herself out and shut the door softly behind her.

* * *

Judy watched Nick topple onto the couch with his eyes shut, his expression indicating that guidance from the universe wouldn’t go amiss. Chief Bogo probably had looked the same after they’d left his office.

“Did you call for dinner?” she asked.

He groaned, squinting at her upside down. “Forgot.”

“I’ve got it.” She already had Don’s on dial. “Usual?”

“Double portions.” He threw an arm over his eyes,

“There,” she said once it was ordered, turning off her phone. “Fifteen to twenty minutes.”

“Hallelujah.”

“So that was your ex-girlfriend,” Judy said.

Nick’s tail flicked and he laughed, a short bark between amused and resigned, before pushing himself into a sitting position. “Right. You’re not the waffling type. You don’t beat around the bush.”

“If you don’t want to talk about her, that’s fine,” she said honestly. “It’s your decision, not mine.”

“But I have to _make_ the decision.”

“That’s just your cross to bear.”

He sighed for a long second, picked up the TV remote and fiddled with it.

“Well, first off, I suppose,” he said, staring at the dark screen as though it was somehow being unhelpful, “‘girlfriend’ is too strong a word. It never went that far.”

“Oh.” Judy frowned, thinking of Nick’s tension, Aurelia’s casual _Nicky_. “But you--” Then it clicked. _Dumb bunny_. “ _Oh._ Right.”

Nick slanted a smirk at her but mercifully let it pass. “Aurelia is definitely not the _girlfriend_ type. Which is good for me, because I’d probably be in prison right now. Exponential increase, you know. That time I got arrested? It was . . . to do with Aurelia.”

“She got you _arrested_?” The worst romantic luck that had befallen any of Judy’s siblings was the art teacher finding them stuck to the table after accidentally rolling into some sculpting cement.

“Well. Yes and no. It wasn’t directly her fault, but I wouldn’t have been there otherwise. I wasn’t convicted, so it worked out,” he said without a grain of enthusiasm.

“So she was here because. . .” Though she could guess. She’d feel embarrassed about being here tonight, of all nights, if a) the bathtub incident hadn’t been a freak accident, b) Nick hadn’t threatened her with extreme annoyance if she’d tried to stay anywhere else, and c) he hadn’t done a passable impression of Chief Bogo the entire time Aurelia had been in his apartment.

“It’s what she does. She comes back to town and looks me up.” He sighed, slumping down on the couch like he wanted to meld with the cushions. “I know the answer before I even ask, but -- you’ve never done anything self-destructive, have you? Repeatedly, with your eyes wide open, because you were just _that_ short on sense.”

She couldn’t help the twitch of a smile that brought on. “A lot of folks would say yes.”

“Yeah, but there’s things you _have_ to do, because of who you want to be. And then there’s things that you _know_ are going to screw you over and you do them anyway.” His expression would have won a dryness contest in Sahara Square by a long drought. “Good things can happen because of the former -- look at you. But bad things happen because of the latter. They’re guaranteed. And that’s. . . me when it comes to Aurelia, sadly. Stupidly. So without meaning to, you ran an intervention tonight.”

“And what are you going to do if she comes back?” she asked, hoping that was delicate enough.

“Throw myself off the mountain?” Nick smirked, but his tone was self-mocking. “She probably won’t. She never sticks around for very long.”

Judy wasn’t sure about that. Nick had told her, sort of, why _he_ kept letting Aurelia back into his life, but he hadn’t said anything about why _Aurelia_ kept coming back. If it had just been convenience or opportunity, she wouldn’t have tracked Nick down and sat waiting for him.

“Nick,” she started, but someone rapped on the door.

“That had better be the food,” Nick said, getting up from the couch. “Or else I might be eating whoever’s on the other side of the door.”

Thankfully it was the food, delivered by Harry, an otter who pretty much always made these runs. Nick chatted and tipped him while Judy set the table with his two plates.

“ _I_ live in a dump,” she said. “Says the fox who has two cups, two plates -- everything in the kitchen only for two. And nothing for cooking with.”

“I’ll be in trouble if I ever throw a dinner party,” Nick said easily, prying open the delivery sack. “Good thing that’s not one of my ambitions. Ohh, you ordered the kimchi barbecue.” He inhaled the steam, his ears dropping back in bliss.

“Yes, and it’s _mine_.” She pointed the chopsticks at him in a clear threat, even though she’d ordered the kimchi with him in mind. He had no problem with green food as long as it was spicy.But if she let on, he’d not steal any of it and that would defeat the purpose. “I’ll thank you to stick with your spicy fish.”

She had a bite of kimchi cabbage halfway to her mouth and her eyes on Nick, who was radiating nonchalance in a clear intent to nab a piece off her plate the minute she looked elsewhere, when her phone rang.

“Better answer that,” he said. “At this time of night, that can only be your parents.”

She narrowed her eyes and then, smiling, said, “You’re right.”

He looked pleased with himself until she took her plate with her to grab the phone where she’d left it on the coffee table. He was right: her parents’ faces hogged the screen. At least it was just a regular call, not Muzzle Time.

“Hi, Mom,” she said, putting the call on speaker as she slid back into her chair at the table. (Nick, at least, had sensibly sized furniture.)

“ _Hi, sweetie_.” In the background, she heard her dad call, “ _Hi, Jude! Buckley, you let your sister play Pawpatine if she wants to--_ ”

“Hi, Bonnie,” said Nick, leaning forward on the pretense of speaking more directly to the phone, but really getting in a better position to steal off Judy’s plate. “Stu.”

“ _Hello, Nick, dear_ ,” her mother said fondly.

Judy rolled her eyes at him and shifted her plate away from his not-so-innocently hovering chopsticks. She _did_ still have to pay him back for that bunny shopping comment.

“ _Are you two high and dry? The weather report said there was a humdinger of a storm heading your way._ ”

The storm obligingly sent a crackle of lightning and a clap of thunder to rattle the windows. Judy winced, dropping her ears, and Nick, the wily fox, nabbed a tofu cube off her plate.

“We’re dry _now_ ,” he said, smirking at her around his chopsticks. “Earlier, not so much.”

“It hit as we were coming home. Nick’s place, I mean.”

“ _Goodness -- are you going to be able to get home all right?_ ”

“Well.” Judy made a face at Nick but tried to sound completely casual. “I’m staying over here. My apartment . . . isn’t livable right now. There was some water damage.”

Nick gave her a thumb’s up. If her parents were checking in because of a thunderstorm, they’d have a nervous breakdown over a gigantic bathtub crashing through her ceiling. (Really, what did a tiny ferret need with a tub _that_ big?)

“ _From the storm_?” her mother asked, confused.

“No, just someone’s bathtub upstairs. It’s fine, Mom.” She used her chopsticks to block Nick’s next stealth attack on her plate.

Tinny clanging and shouting echoed over the phone; her mother sighed and the noise receded, as if she was moving away.

“ _Jonas has discovered ‘Paw Wars,’_ ” said her mother. “ _Everything’s a battle against good and evil these days. Now, honey_ ,” she went on, while Nick pointed at Judy, mouthing, ‘Who does that remind me of,’ “ _it sounds a lot more than_ simple _water damage if you’re having to stay over with Nick._ ”

“They just need some time to fix the . . . leak . . . in the ceiling.” Well, a hole in the ceiling was similar to a leak in that it wasn’t a good thing to have above your bed. Supposing you _had_ a bed that hadn’t been crushed by a falling bathtub.

“ _If you say so, sweetie_ ,” her mother said, the exact way she had assured Mabel that she knew the thing with Geordi wasn’t _serious_. The next week, when Mabel had announced her wedding date, their mother had said, “Of course, sweetie,” in that same tone.

“Mom, I’m going to have to let you go,” Judy said. “Before Nick steals _all_ the food off my plate.”

“And here I thought an officer of the law upheld honesty,” Nick said.

“ _Oh, that was the other thing,_ ” her mother said. “ _I’ve sent you two a care package -- just some goodies, you know._ ”

Nick perked up, while Judy remembered the ten-pound box her mother had sent last time. Nick had demolished it in little over twenty-four hours.

“You’re the queen, Bonnie,” he said.

“Yes, Nick’s already planning how to eat all of it. Thanks, Mom. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?”

“ _Of course. Good night, sweetie. You too, Nick, dear._ ” The call ended, and Judy turned off her phone, setting it aside.

“Scandalous behavior, Miss Hopps,” said Nick. “Staying overnight with your _male friend_.”

Judy tossed a potato chunk at him, which he happily caught out of the air. “You don’t understand. My parents were married _before_ they graduated high school.”

Nick paused with his chopsticks between his teeth as he worked that out. “So you’re saying they’d have no other way of thinking about. . . sleep-overs.”

“They missed graduation because Mom went into labor.”

Nick choked. “No wonder you have three hundred siblings.”

“That’s Bunnyburrow, for pretty much everyone. Most of my senior class was already married before graduation. The ones who waited till _afterwards_ were taking their time.”

Nick gave her a look she couldn’t quite interpret. “You really were the odd rabbit out, weren’t you?”

“My brother Henry wanted to put me up as an attraction at the fair. Said he’d make a killing.”

The indecipherable look didn’t become any clearer. “And what did you say to that?”

“It isn’t so much _what_ I said as the way I glued him to his chair at the dinner table.”

Nick laughed, completely decipherable again. “Do you _know_ how many nieces and nephews you have?”

She snorted. “Right this minute?”

“Or five minutes ago.”

She laughed and let him nab her last piece of tofu. “Well, it’ll probably be more soon. My sister Mabel’s pregnant again. She was in the same litter as me,” she added, more out of habit than necessity. Their teachers certainly hadn’t been able to keep them straight, and even her mother had had a habit of calling, “May-Don-Jude-Hen-Abe-Rose!” when she’d wanted something from them as kids; but Nick’s incredible memory, which included most names and faces in Zootopia and a microscopically detailed index of its geography, had easily expanded to include her entire immediate family _and_ the few cousins he’d met.

“That’s the one you were closest to,” he said.

“May. . . tried to get it. The whole cop thing. She didn’t understand it, but she tried. Then she married Geordi and we just. . . went in different directions. Of course,” she went on, because Nick had an oddly thoughtful look on his face and she wanted to chase it away, “being _close_ to your siblings can mean. . . funny things. I set fire to her favorite dress once. I forget why.”

“On _purpose_?”

“Oh, absolutely. Payback for something or other.”

“I can see I’ve been underestimating your vengeful capacity all this time.” He fished the spine out of his fish with a pensive air. “Though on reflection -- considering the second time we met -- and every day since then -- I guess I should only be surprised you haven’t set fire to _me_.”

“She wasn’t _wearing_ the dress at the time,” Judy said airily, and he laughed again.

“All right, so I know about your sister’s sordid dating history--”

“ _Barely_ \-- I haven’t told you about the time our dad caught her and Geordi --”

“And you’re _not going to_ ,” he said, his ears cocking back. “And you know about me and Aurelia, but what about you, eh, Carrots? Where are the tales of Judy Hopps’ romantic entanglements?”

So they’d come to that. She supposed it was only fair, since Aurelia had been thrown in their laps. She’d always kept it to herself -- not because she cared, really, but because folks gave her such pitying looks. She got enough of those just for being a bunny cop. Pitying looks would make a sound investment if she could turn them into capital.

“They’re nonexistent,” she said.

Nick rolled his eyes. “ _Fine_. ‘Entanglements’ being too un-Judy-like a word -- ”

Great, it was so bizarre as to not even enter his mind. That would make this less awkward, sure, she thought with a sigh. “No, I mean the ‘romantic’ part. No romantic anything, entangled or otherwise.”

Nick narrowed his eyes, as if he suspected her of fibbing. She raised her eyebrows at him. Then a funny look came over his face. Even though it was embarrassing being the target of it, his confusion was cute.

“I told you,” she said, “carnival freak show, remember?”

He waved his chopsticks dismissively, his expression settling back to a more normal Nick-look. “Got arrested because of a _romantic entanglement_ , remember? Pretty sure that doesn’t happen routinely in Bunny Burrow either. Perhaps in most places. Or to most mammals.”

“If it does, the perps keep quiet about it.”

“I can empathize.”

He examined his bean sprouts with great care. That was a means of working out what to say: he never ate his bean sprouts.

She sighed. “What?”

“You’re embarrassed. That’s really not necessary, Carrots. I’m just thinking of a _few_ of the stupid moments I’ve had because of Aurelia. . . Yeah. I’m thinking it’s really, really not necessary for _you_ to be embarrassed.”

She picked a clump of bean sprouts off his plate and chewed them while she thought. “I don’t think you need to be embarrassed either.”

“I haven’t even told you what I was arrested for. And I’m not sure I’m ever going to,” he muttered.

“I mean. . .” She _had_ been the odd rabbit out, as he’d said, in Bunnyburrow all her life: out of step with the others, with absurd ideas that belonged with the big blue ox in the sky, as they’d said. Then in Zootopia, where she’d had naive ideas of belonging, she’d been just as out of step. She didn’t want to feel that with Nick, of all mammals.

“I don’t know what I mean,” she said at last. Nick, his chin propped in his paw while he waited, snorted in amusement. “Just that. . . it’s not something you need to be embarrassed about with _me_.”

Nick’s chin was still resting on his paw and he was smiling slightly. Then he reached out and flicked her ear. “Then it’s got to be the same for me, Carrots.”

She batted his paw away, pretending to scowl. He laughed. “Right.” He stretched, pulling his left arm behind his head until his joints cracked. “Ow. Clean up time.”

“I’ve got kitchen clean-up duty. You’ve got yourself.” She took his plate away from him, stacking it on top of hers. “I know you didn’t get a chance to do it earlier.”

“Right, I had to take out the trash,” he said with a strong streak of mockery. “Though it took itself out, as usual.”

“I don’t think you mean that,” Judy said. “But in any case. . .” She nudged him between his shoulder blades. “Go on, then.”

“Yes, Officer,” Nick said with the little salute that was grinding the Chief’s teeth down.

Judy shook her head, smiling to herself, and turned on the sink to heat up the water. At least Nick’s tiny stash of dishware meant washing up was easy.

* * *

It _was_ weird, Nick thought as he scrubbed shampoo into his fur. But it was only weird in a general way. In a Judy way, it made perfect sense. This was Judy: driven, single-minded, the first bunny cop from _anywhere_ , and she’d come from Bunny Burrow -- not Zootopia, with its pretense of high-minded ideals and exotic, outlandish ways, but from a little farm out in the sticks, where mammals did exactly what they’d always done because that’s just what everyone did.

In fact, by the time he’d switched off the water, he was pretty sure it made only perfect sense for Judy to have avoided, not bothered with, or never availed herself of the opportunity to get _romantically entangled_. She’d implied that she was too bizarre for anyone’s comfort, but he found that hard to swallow. In terms of turning heads, Judy easily matched Aurelia, who’d always used her beauty to great advantage in her line of crime. If her entire senior class was getting down to the business of repopulating Bunnyburrow (as if it was in danger of its numbers dropping off), they were as hormone-addled as any other teenagers in the world. He found it pretty hard to believe Judy’s outlandish cop dreams could have made any sizable dent in that, so it was more likely that _she’d_ been the reluctant one. It wasn’t as if she had a rotten personality, either. Even Crotchety Bogo liked her.

But he’d let it drop, for now. Maybe if he ever felt the urge to offer up some of his less humiliating Aurelia stories. . . but he definitely wasn’t in the mood tonight. There had been others besides Aurelia, but much briefer; she was the only one who’d returned to his life again and again -- though she was certainly not the only evidence offered in the case for his stupidity.

He pulled on a tank and sweatpants before shambling out of the bathroom, rubbing a towel across the back of his neck.

Judy was curled up on the couch watching _The Great Buffalo Bake Off_. The kitchen was a lot more spotless than he ever got when he cleaned it. He usually let the one plate soak in the sink until he was ready to use it again.

He swung over the back of the couch to drop onto the the end Judy wasn’t occupying. “I was thinking about the inauguration tom . . . orrow. . .”

He trailed off as the TV distracted him with a three-tiered strawberry shortcake. Then Judy giggled at him.

“Are you hoping there will be legendary desserts?” she asked, muting the TV.

He had to put his back to the screen or he’d start drooling. “A fox can dream, even if it _is_ a government function. But no, I meant. . . Aurelia comes back when there’s something in Zootopia to make it worth her while. I don’t think the overlap with the new mayor swearing in is coincidental.”

Judy blinked once, slowly. He thought his earlier estimation was on point: the shape, color and size of her eyes were pretty arresting, for lack of a better word.

“You said she wouldn’t do anything illegal here,” she said, frowning as she thought it over.

“She wouldn’t. But she goes where the. . . action is.” He rubbed the towel over his head, then dragged it down into his lap, feeling frustrated with his inability to articulate it. “Something she said when we were talking, when you were cleaning up -- oh, hell, I don’t know. I just don’t think it’s a coincidence. I think something’s. . . brewing, stewing. What have you.”

The thunder rumbled, helpfully punctuating that ominous statement. But Judy only nodded, slowly.

“I keep looking at the invitations and thinking I’m being told something. I just. . . have no idea what.” She smiled. “Either we’re good cops for having the instinct or terrible because we have no idea what it’s for.”

“Yeah . . . wait. Are you saying you keep those damn things on the wall because you’re trying to work out a hunch?”

“Oh, no. _That_ ’s just to get on your nerves.” She grinned at him, and he was damn sure an obnoxious number of bunnies must have asked her out at some point or another.

“God’ll get you for that,” he said.

“Well, I wouldn’t want you to have to face him all alone.”

An _army_ of bunnies, surely. “Isn’t it past your bedtime, Carrots? It’s all of ten o’clock.”

“And a big day tomorrow,” Judy said.

“Well, there you go.” He hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “Bedroom’s all yours.”

“No, it’s not,” she said firmly. “I’ll take the couch.”

“And could I ever face your parents and three hundred and four siblings and uncountable nieces and nephews if I let you, the guest, sleep on the couch? I’m sleeping on the couch.”

“It’s already imposition enough for me to--”

“I have another _box_ of those Berry Poppers -- that’s ten bags total -- and I _will_ crunch every single popper next to your ear while you sleep.”

Judy was clearly trying not to laugh, but she faked a scowl. “We’re not staying up all night arguing about this.”

“Then you’ll take the bedroom. Excellent. I love it when I win.” He reached for the remote -- no matter how early he got up, going to bed before midnight was criminal, and there was more of _Bake Off_ left -- but Judy held it out of reach, her expressive eyes narrowed.

“I’m smaller,” she said. “It makes more sense for me to sleep on the couch.”

“Too bad you’re not going to,” he said. “You agreed to take the bed.”

“I did _not_ \--”

“Your word against mine, Hopps.”

“I’ll come out here and sit on you in your sleep.”

“Right, because you weigh so very much. You’ll be asleep anyway by the time I knock off. Word on the street is you to turn into a pumpkin by 10:30.”

She sighed, long and loud. Then she tapped the remote against her nose, studying him. He folded his arms and tapped his claws against his elbow.

“Fine,” she said, drawing the word out. “We share.”

“We’re not both fitting on the couch, that’s for sure.”

“The bed,” she said, rolling her eyes.

For a moment, he thought lightning had forked through his ears. But Judy was just looking at him with her eyebrows faintly raised, as if to say, ‘Well?’

“Officer Hopps, what would your mother think?”

“Something _sordid_ , no doubt,” Judy said sweetly. “Come on, don’t be dumb. We’ll both fit in the bed, it’s got tons of room. Did you buy it from the same place that ferret got his bathtub?”

He’d bought a bed that took up more than half the bedroom because he’d been used to sleeping in the drawer of an old armoire. He had never shared this fact with Judy, or told her that the abandoned industrial complex where she’d found him had been where he’d lived for years. Instead, he said, “That’s your excuse to satisfy your sordid curiosity on my person?”

“You said it yourself: I’m about to turn into a pumpkin. Surely _sordid_ curiosity couldn’t be satisfied that quickly.” She tossed the remote at him. “But since I’m not about to stop arguing about it before then, you might as well give in.”

Nick caught the remote out of the air. He really didn’t have any other arguments, except _propriety_ , and Judy would only laugh at him. He’d deserve being laughed at, too. They were both adults; this wasn’t the 1800’s; and they weren’t strangers, either; they were best friends. Despite what her missionary neighbors might think, it was dumb to be fussy about it.

“Fine,” he said. “But with extreme reluctance. I wish for the record to say that I’m being coerced.”

“Turnabout is fair play,” Judy said with a sly look of triumph.

He really was very proud of her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just cleared 100 pages on this fic (in my Google doc where I store it). I... have no idea how that happened.


	4. The Wrong Side

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for all your sweet words and kudos c:

Judy woke up to her phone’s alarm beeping. . .

. . . and something heavy weighing her down.

Her eyes snapped open. For a moment she didn’t know where she was. The bed was soft, not riddled with springs, the room dark, no bright tint of streetlight. Rain was drumming on the roof --

_Rain. Bathtub. Kimchi arctic fox Bogo’s office cupcakes bed_

Nick. The heavy thing was Nick -- or rather, his arm.

She knew she’d started off on the left side of the bed when she’d fallen asleep. Nick had brought up _Bake Off_ on his laptop and Paul Hippowood had been pronouncing judgment on a Charlotte Mousse, last she remembered. She must have rolled to the center of the bed at some point, and now Nick was partially draped over her, pinning her. He was heavier than he looked.

Her alarm had cycled through and was now jangling again. She didn’t know how he was sleeping through it.

“Nick,” she said. When that had no effect, she tried to wriggle free, but his arm only tightened, scooping her against him. He muttered in his sleep and burrowed deeper into the pillows (for which he had a charming weakness), his breath drifting across the back of her neck. Her fur prickled and she shivered, confused, because it wasn’t an entirely bad feeling. Or a bad feeling at all. With the sound of the rain and the closeness of the dark pre-dawn and the not-unpleasant weight of his arm, it was. . . nice actually.

But they needed to get up.

She squirmed around and got her arm free. Maybe if she pinched his nose he’d wake up--

The TV flicked on in the living room, blaring some really appalling thrash metal.

Nick came awake with a snort. “Whathe fucking. . .” he said blearily.

“Is that how you get yourself up?” Judy asked, trying not to laugh. “How aren’t you traumatized every morning?”

Nick had been rubbing at his eyes, but then he froze. He peered down at her past his raised paw, his face in the cast-off green glow of his alarm clock looking almost -- horrified.

“Judy?” he said, like he wasn’t sure.

“Who else?” She squirmed to get out from under him -- he still hadn’t moved -- and he jumped off like she _had_ lit him on fire.

“I. . . what--” He clicked on the bathroom light, flinching in the sudden wash of brightness, and then growled, “Oh, would that fucking TV fucking shut up,” and stalked out of the bedroom.

Judy shook her head as she switched off her phone’s alarm. Nick got in _really_ bad moods when he woke up, apparently.

“Maybe you should try putting it on something other than _thrash metal_ ,” she said as he slouched back into the bedroom.

“I sleep through everything else,” he muttered, rubbing a paw over his eyes.

“How late did you stay up watching _Bake Off_?” she asked, stepping into the bathroom and leaning up to look in the mirror. Fur a mess, but she didn’t look like an extra on the _Night of the Shedding Dead_. Maybe Nick had been having a nightmare before he’d woken up.

“What is time, really?” Eyes shut, Nick propped himself against the bathroom door as if it was the only thing keeping him upright. “A social construct. . . designed to divorce us from our natural rhythms. . .”

“Is that what you’ll tell Chief Bogo when you fall asleep during the mayor’s inaugural speech?”

“He’d probably just snap me in half. . . no defense necessary.” He yawned, showing a lot of sharp teeth. “Whoever invented mornings should be caned. . .”

Judy fixed his toothbrush for him and put it in his paw. He jumped, eyes flying open and suddenly looking a lot more awake.

“Were you having nightmares?” she asked, picking up her brush to smooth out her fur.

“No,” he mumbled around the toothbrush. He didn’t elaborate, though.

He shuffled forward to spit into the sink and Judy obligingly moved aside. “Almost done with this and then I’ll get out of your fur,” she said, running the brush along her ears.

“What’s that?” Nick asked, squinting.

“What’s what?”

“On your cheek.”

She raised her paw reflexively, and then noticed where he was pointing. Oh. Ohh, no. She did not want to have this conversation at six in the morning. Or, well, ever.

“Just something that happened when I was a kid,” she said, moving to brush her fur down to cover the pale scars, not even visible most of the time. Her fur had got rucked up; that must have been how he saw it. Why he had to notice _now_ , of all times--

He reached out and ran the rough pad of his thumb over her cheek. She froze. Her heart decided to go faster than normal, her brain to point out that Nick was really. . . tall. Not towering and enormous like Bogo, but definitely _tall_.

“They look like claw marks,” Nick said. His voice was low and rough and distracted, like he wasn’t all there. His paw was curled around her cheek, barely touching her.

“It was just from a fight when I was a kid.” Her own voice sounded funny. She _felt_ funny, like she had in the bed with his arm around her, only more so. “It was a long time ago.”

She reached up to pat his paw but his gaze suddenly focused, meeting her eyes.

“It was a fox,” he said.

Judy’s heart kicked up a faster pace, but she tried to keep her expression calm. “Yes. I got in a dumb kid’s fight with a fox.” She put her paw over his and squeezed it. “I’m going to finish getting ready, all right?”

He looked at her paw holding onto his. “Right,” he said.

She smiled up at him, squeezed his paw again, and slid the bathroom door shut behind her as she left. She put her paw over her heart, willing it to slow down.

That really could have gone a lot worse. She didn’t know why she felt like a bullet had ripped through the air close enough to ripple her fur.

* * *

Halfway through brushing his teeth, Nick realized he’d already brushed them. Judy had obligingly helped him out the first time, while his brain had refused to make an effort.

It usually took him a while to get moving in the morning; about four hours. So this feeling like someone had swung a hedgehog at his head, that was -- normal. For him. It was just part of any hour before ten being ungodly.

He spat toothpaste into the sink and blearily consulted his reflection. It was a very unrewarding consultation. He should probably do something about the state of his fur.

And not go around touching Judy’s cheek any time soon.

“Ungodly hour,” he muttered. “Unholy, sinful. The enemy of all that is good and pure and sleep.”

When he rolled back the bathroom door, the apartment struck him as oddly bereft. He stuck his head out of the bedroom but found no sight or sound of Judy. Maybe she’d run off to get away from the downright weird way he was acting.

At least there was farewell a note taped to the bedroom door: “ _Gone to get coffee before you collapse_. _Will ponder why haven’t I nagged you to get a coffeemaker, since that’s the only thing you ingest as much as sugar._ ”

He read the note twice, not because he needed to, and then thunked his head twice against the door.

Then, rubbing his forehead, he slid open his closet door and went about the laborious business of putting his pants on the right way around.

Judy let herself in the front door as he was struggling to remember how you tied a tie before seven in the morning.

“Now I know why you never show up to work with your tie on,” she said, setting on the countertop a grease-stained bag, a cup of coffee, and a smoothie. “Come here, I’ll do it.”

“It’s fine,” he said, because he did not need that, Judy being so close, in this terribly unsettled state of mind.

“Your fingers aren’t supposed to be a part of the knot,” Judy said dryly.

“I have it on good authority that in the Badgerlands of the wild west they most certainly are.”

Judy reached up, grabbed his paw, and tugged the tie off his finger. “You’ll have to sit down, I can’t reach all the way up there.”

His unhelpful brain would not supply a reason why he couldn’t do this. He closed his eyes while she undid the tie completely and started over. It was either that or stare at the way her nose twitched or her eyebrows slanted as she concentrated.

Instead of drifting in a peaceful, dozing fog, however, his mind chose to replay that bewildering moment of first waking up, when everything had been dark and jumbled and Judy warm, her heartbeat pressed against his arm.

He’d been terrified that he’d done something extremely stupid.

A gentle tug at his neck signaled Judy was done. “There you go. Now, coffee and donuts, before you go comatose.”

“How can you think so clearly this early?” he said, keeping his eyes shut. He had to open them when she took his elbow and pulled.

“The donuts are this way, Sleeping Beauty.”

He’d been going to say something, possibly which would’ve been witty, but then she put the bag of donuts in his paw and he decided that some things were more important than clever rejoinders, as long as they were donut shaped.

These donuts were fresh, hot even, the glaze extra sugary. Judy didn’t eat donuts for breakfast, which meant she’d got them especially for him. He was feeling an uncharacteristic urge, brought on by the stupid way he’d woken up. He wanted to. . .

“Did you buy _ponchos_?” he asked as Judy flapped a sheet of plastic out of its packet.

“They were selling them at the convenience store. I also got a bigger umbrella.” She held it up, or rather, just held it, since it was about her height. “We don’t want to end up like we did last night, do we? And your donuts need protecting.”

Judy was dangerous, with her gigantic umbrellas and fresh donuts and thin, claw-spaced scratches on her cheek and quick heartbeat. He was not equipped to deal with all these aspects of Judy first thing in the morning.

He stuffed a whole donut into his mouth so he wouldn’t have to speak.

The clouds were still unloading rain, and the train was packed with damp mammals and the musty smell of soggy fur. They didn’t get a seat that time, having to prop themselves against one of the poles. But that was good. If Judy had leaned up against him again, he might not have been able to fight that Urge. He would not name the Urge. If he did, some Disaster would strike him. He was very supersti -- certain about that.

The pole was cold and thankfully jabbed into his shoulder blades. He sought refuge in his morning malaise, sipping his coffee and trying to remain upright and not saying much at all. Judy let him stick to his own thoughts. He couldn’t decide whether he was relieved or perturbed that she didn’t seem to be having any trouble filing his bizarre behavior into a file marked, “Nick’s Brain Not Engaged Before 10 AM.” Perhaps that _was_ all it was.

 _No_ , said That Voice -- not the cynical one, the Other One, the one that was Better and Smarter than Regular Nick. _And you need to watch yourself today. And watch Judy_.

Which was not helpful at all.

“Our stop,” Judy said helpfully when the train pulled into Central Station. She wrapped a paw around his elbow, guiding him around a hippo so engrossed in texting that she almost flattened Nick against the side of the train.

The rain had shifted the inaugural speech from the square outside City Hall inside the building itself. Even though the clock was rolling over 8 AM, the sky was so dark you could hardly tell that night had reluctantly shuffled off. They handed their ponchos and umbrella off to a pair of porcupines standing inside the door, checking coats and inspecting bags.

“Hope we don’t get those back full of holes,” said Nick -- once they were out of earshot. Even he knew better than to offend someone covered in spikes.

“Good, you’re feeling better,” said Judy, smiling. “I was starting to get worried. You didn’t notice that alpaca on the train at all, did you?”

He wouldn’t have noticed if there’d been a damn dinosaur on the train. “Oh, God. How much did I miss?”

Judy was already tapping at her phone, bringing up her photo album. He said, “You caught _photographic evidence_?” and leaned over her shoulder to look. She obligingly dropped her ears so he could better see. He took pictures of ridiculous-looking mammals all the time, but Judy felt that was in bad taste.

“I knew you weren’t paying attention, so. . .” She held up the photo of an alpaca with ‘Gazelle’ shaved into the wool along the side of their face, wool that had been dyed pink. The alpaca was wearing a sequined jumpsuit which they must have made themselves: the sequins formed a pattern of Gazelle’s face on the sleeves and body.

“Actually, I think it shows a lot of dedication,” said Judy. “Though I . . . really wouldn’t want to see one of those for _me_. But maybe Gazelle does.”

“I can’t believe you took a picture of this poor mammal.” He took her paw -- which was also warm -- and drew it into the crook of his arm. “Truly, my bad habits are finally making inroads. I’m so proud. Possibly a bit disturbed. But that only makes me prouder.”

“You’re right,” said Judy, looking solemn. “I should delete this before the weight on my conscience becomes too much to bear--”

“Don’t you _dare_. Not before you send it to me first.”

“Ohhh, no,” growled a voice above their heads, interrupting her laughter. “We will not be having with this!”

Bogo was towering over them, looking like he was about to start snorting steam. He pointed a hoof down at them and said, “No _holding paws_. Not now, not not any time soon, not ever!”

Nick and Judy both looked down, where Judy’s paw was still tucked around Nick’s arm. In her defense, he had his paw curled over hers, keeping it in place. And suddenly, Nick was annoyed.

“This is a promenade position,” he said. “Victorian _beavers_ wouldn’t be scandalized.”

Judy blinked up at him and the chief raised his impressive eyebrows. Then they came down like a thunderhead.

“What. Was that. Wilde?” he said, and it sounded a lot like, _Remember I can squash you like a wormy apple._

Nick kicked his irritation under the mental equivalent of a bed. “Nothing at all, Chief. Think it must have been the sound of the storm.”

“ _Good_. Then perhaps, as you’re on a roll, you can tell me why is there still _paw-holding_ transpiring in front of me?”

Both Nick and Judy let go at the same time.

Bogo snorted at them expressively and lumbered between them, forcing them apart, just like Nick had done last night with Aurelia. He narrowed his eyes at Nick as he went.

“Sorry,” Nick said, avoiding Judy’s considering gaze.

“You definitely woke up on the wrong side of the bed,” she said. “We’ll have to switch tonight.”

The Chief looked back at them in horror and, not watching where he was going, ran into a raccoon reporter. For the raccoon it must have been like a brick wall kneeing him in the face. He staggered backwards with an indignant, “Hey! Watch where you’re--” and then got a good, long, upwards look at who’d run into him.

“My mistake!” he squeaked and scuttled off, clutching his camera.

Nick risked a glance at Judy. Her smile was rather sneaky.

“I thought that’d get his attention,” she said pleasantly.

Then she tilted her head, peering up at Nick, who was having to fight that Urge again. “You realize he only reacted like that because you’re always driving him up the wall? He was just trying to pay you back.”

“Surely Chief Sunshine wouldn’t be so ornery,” Nick said -- though he made sure Bogo was engrossed in talking to a mountain goat with a venerable beard before he said it. “There may be something in your ‘wrong said of the bed’ theory. Even,” he felt his mouth curve, “if you only said it to scandalize him.”

Judy only smiled. “Come on. Let’s join the Chief.”

Yes, Nick thought as the old goat (founder of something important, he knew, though the cogs in his brain weren’t interested in churning up that data), turned to greet them. It was a good theory, if only a little narrow.

He’d woke up that morning on the wrong side of his life. It had taken a couple of hours to sort it out, but now Nick saw what he wanted. It was like catching the shape of a shadow that sharpened only as the light shifted.

And what he wanted was not a good thing at all, because it was Judy.

* * *

Judy, Nick, and the chief made their way upstairs by way of a lot of hoof- and-paw-shakes, small talk, and painful contortions of the chief’s face. He looked like he would much rather be out somewhere getting shot at than here, mingling with politicians and bigwigs. And because he was frankly terrible at small talk and Nick wasn’t paying attention, most of the duty fell to Judy.

To be frank, she’d rather be getting shot at, too.

Some of the other mammals, like Mr. Hornig, who’d founded the children’s charity hospital, seemed genuinely pleased to meet her. Others were “pleased” in the sense that they’d been waiting to hear a good joke and she was the punchline. Some -- mostly large mammals whose kneecaps were at her eye level -- ignored her to talk solely to the chief.

Judy was used to that. It wasn’t any more pleasant the millionth time than it had been the first two hundred, but she’d learned to live with it. What she liked less was the shifty looks they aimed at Nick, who thankfully was so preoccupied that he didn’t appear to notice anyone was talking at all. In fact, she knew he hadn’t, because he tended to achieve porcelain-grade irony when folks did their “So _this_ is the bunny cop” bit.

Really, it was good that something was keeping him inside his own head. In this odd state of his, he might not have been able to control his irony levels.

As soon as they got a quiet moment, she’d ask him. Was it the scratches (caused by a fox)? Aurelia? He’d seemed fine before she’d fallen asleep, but perhaps that had just been the glow cast by kimchi and bake-offs.

After more than half an hour, they’d finally risen through City Hall to the room where the inaugural speech would take place. Reporters laden with cameras and mics performed last minute checks; civil servants tested the lights and sound system; security aides patrolled along the windows, which looked loftily over the city below. Today, heavy curtains of rain blotted out most of the buildings.

For a moment, she, Nick and the chief were left to themselves. The chief’s expression lapsed back into its usual ornery lines with a kind of sagging relief.

“‘Scuse me,” said Nick absently, and drifted away from them toward the Gents.

Judy watched him go.

“What the devil’s wrong with Wilde?” said the chief.

Judy blinked up at him, but had to step behind his legs to avoid getting trampled a group of superior-looking okapi in sharp suits.

“Never mind,” said Bogo before she could reply. “Turns out, I don’t care.”

He cast a look down at Judy that she would have described as -- well, as a glare on anyone else, but which on the chief carried a distinct shade of embarrassment.

“Wish this bloody circus would get on with its own pomp and bloody circumstance,” he said.

“Thank you, sir,” she said sincerely. He pretended not to hear her.

An impala in a cream business suit was walking up to the podium adorned with the seal of Zootopia. She tapped a hoof against the microphone, making it buzz, and then said, “If everyone will find their seats.”

Bogo let out a sniff like ripping vinyl. “ _Finally_.”

He parted the crowd by dint of being as big most of the largest predators in the room. Other mammals seemed somehow to occupy a smaller space when they saw him coming.

Three chairs had been placed for Bogo, Nick, and herself: a noteworthy difference, since she and Nick could have sat in one together and were subsequently expected to, most of the time. They were close to the front, with a good view of the podium.

Just as the impala was raising her arms for silence, Nick slid onto the seat next to Judy. She didn’t get to say anything, however, before the impala called, “Mayor Stoneclaw, everyone.”

Stoneclaw walked onto the stage to sharp applause.

He was a panther, tall and lean, called _mature_ by the papers, though there was no hint of grey in his fur. His expression was pleasant, his eyes gold, and as his gaze swept across the assembly, Judy thought _calculating_.

She would have sworn that he looked directly at her, except for knowing that was silly.

He smiled across the crowd, a slight tilt of his lips, as he curled his paws around the podium.

“Good day to you all,” he said. His voice was cultured and polished, with an undercurrent that reminded Judy of a claw retracting.

Nick leaned over and murmured, “You voted for this guy?”

“Yes,” she whispered back, while a skunk on the other side of Bogo gave them a dirty look for whispering.

“Learn something new about you every day, Carrots,” Nick said in a low voice, tweaking one of her ears before sitting back.

“This is a great day for Zootopia,” said Stoneclaw. “Because, quite simply, it is a new day. It is not a new day because I am to be your new mayor. It is a new day, quite simply, because another rotation of the earth has begun. The sun has risen again. Tonight it will set, as it has always done. There is no question in our minds about this -- it is not something we think about at all. We accept it, as we accept many things that are quite miraculous, such as the fact that rain falls and you and I are in this room together.

“I can see your curiosity,” said Stoneclaw. “Why should these simple facts be miracles? Clouds move in and rain falls -- there was even a forecast, we have been expecting it. You have all been invited here. Nothing seems miraculous about these events after all.

“And yet consider how easily none of this might have happened. A shift in the winds and the rain falls somewhere else. An extra gust of warm air and the rain does not fall at all. A little, or a great, scheme by a cunning and destructive mind, and we predators and prey do not sit here together comfortably, accepting it as part of the fabric of our lives.”

A murmur rippled through the room. Bogo’s tail flicked. Judy was aware of Nick’s attention sharpening. That time, when Stoneclaw’s eyes turned toward her side of the room, she knew he really had been looking at them.

“I am here today, as your new mayor, because of a terrible crime committed by the last mammal to hold this office.” He held his paw out in Judy’s direction. “Through the courageous efforts of our police, who sit in this very room” -- heads swiveled her way, and Bogo’s arms tightened across his chest as it inflated -- “that crime was uncovered and punished. And that crime was only possible because Zootopia lives. It was only possible because anything that lives can be destroyed. Anything that lives is at times healthy and hale, at other times weak and faltering.

“But while we live, our ailments can be cured. That is why you and I stand here today, together: because we are hale. Our cure is in effect. Today, we stand strong because we stand together. We will stand strong tomorrow because we will work together. Together, we will keep our city alive -- we will keep it healthy. I thank you all today for the Zootopia we will build this day, and all the days to come.”

The air rent with clapping as he bowed his head in thanks. He didn’t look pleased with himself, as Lionheart would have done, or grateful, as Bellwether would have pretended to be, but comfortable, the way a mountain is comfortable as it sits where it has sat for millions of years.

Judy tried to calm her heart rate. Given the invitations, it hadn't been entirely unexpected, being singled out; and yet, given everything that had happened -- everything she'd done wrong -- the accolades never quite sat comfortably. Nick had told her, once, " _You'll just have to learn to forgive yourself, Carrots_."

He leaned over, now. “What a charming lot of nothing,” he said, clapping with stale enthusiasm.

She couldn’t help smiling. “Were you expecting anything else?”

“That’d be like expecting the rain to keep me dry.”

“Stop whispering in each other’s ears,” Bogo said. “We’re going to get up, find the mayor, say ‘congratulations’ and ‘thanks for inviting us,’ and get back the much more pleasant business of dealing with the _honest_ lowlifes.”

Nick’s face actually froze as he looked past Bogo’s shoulder; so did Judy’s heart.

“Stealing my joke, Chief,” said Nick, trying not to sound strangled. “I tell that one all the time--”

“Wilde, what's that rubbish you're spouting?”

Then his glare melted off his face like a volcano collapsing in on itself. He slowly revolved to face Stoneclaw, who had come up behind him and was pleasantly waiting to be noticed.

“Mayor Stoneclaw,” said the Chief in a voice that had bypassed wooden and become nicely fossilized. “Thank you for inviting us.”

“And ‘congratulations’ to me, of course,” said Stoneclaw pleasantly. “I must congratulate _you_ , too, on all the honest lowlifes you clean off the streets. It’s only a pity the dishonest ones wear sharp suits and cover their tracks too well -- to use an outdated metaphor.”

Bogo didn’t seem to know what to do with his face. Stoneclaw merely smiled at him and looked down at Nick and Judy.

“Though happily for the city, there are some who can root out dishonesty, no matter what it wears. Officer Hopps.”

She put out her paw. “Congratulations, sir.”

“Thank you, Officer.” He took her paw in a firm grip, but not too firm. She appreciated him not calling her “dear” or trying to crush her paw.

“And Officer Wilde,” said Stoneclaw. He held out his paw to Nick, who took it, his expression completely passive. “I’ve been following your careers with interest. Officer Hopps has the most arrests _and_ convictions on the Force in her first year since -- why, since yourself, Chief Bogo, if my memory serves.”

Since Stoneclaw gave every impression of having the kind of memory that always served, down to the last jot, Bogo didn’t have to reply. “Memory serves you well, sir,” he said anyway.

“And the first arrest being the former Mayor Lionheart, well. . .” Stoneclaw smiled as if he’d just received a bottle of particularly fine wine and been told it was on the house. “And the _second_ being former Mayor Bellwether -- why, that’s a most impressive record in itself. It really does bear up against yours, Chief Bogo. There will be many mammals in the city who will find such a record. . . unsettling. I encourage you, Officers, to use that to your advantage--”

The Chief’s radio crackled. He clamped his hoof over it.

“Emergency call,” he grunted, unclipping it from his belt. “Go ahead, Clawhauser.”

“ _Chief, we have a one-eight-seven at the Natural History Museum. Fangmeyer and Grizzoli have responded._ ”

Judy felt her heart shrink and her ears grow heavy. One-eight-seven was homicide.

“Ten-four,” said Bogo. To Stoneclaw: “If you’ll excuse us--”

“Of course,” said Stoneclaw. “The city has need of you. Do take care.”

“With. Me,” Bogo bit out to Judy and Nick. Pivoting, he moved through the crowd like a steam engine.

Just before passing through the doors, Judy glanced back. Stoneclaw watched them go, that slight smile still on his face, his eyes as sharp as a whetstone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA: Forgot to add this! Stoneclaw is my panther version of Vetinari, as several of you cunning folks have noted c:


	5. In the Dark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Even more of the Discworld stuff is making its way in now. I'm basing the moles on the dwarfs. The Spine is like the Ramtops, or if the earth in ZT looks like ours geographically, whatever major mountain range is nearest: the Rockies, the Alps, the Himalayas, etc. The Under King is the mole version of the Low King.
> 
> Terry Pratchett also, in one of the City Watch books, had a line about monkeys deciding if standing up on two legs was a good career move. I just couldn't get it out of my head, so. Here's to you, Mr. Pratchett ♥︎ We miss you.

Getting away from Stoneclaw's suave congratulations and calculating paw-shakes was a damn relief to Nick. His own terrible judgment was too distracting to deal properly with politicians -- and he hadn’t even got anything to eat. What kind of dishonest function didn’t even have little sandwiches on sticks?

But he’d forego a free ten course meal if Judy got out of claws’ reach of that panther.

All right, yes, it was true that mammals had _ideas_ about each other. Lions got to be the noble ones; rabbits were sweet and dumb and good mainly at multiplying; foxes couldn’t be trusted with anything you hadn’t nailed down. And for centuries they’d thought the earth was the center of the universe, which just went to show how much reality cared about what anyone thought.

And he was of course very keenly aware that they’d been through the whole predator/prey thing. He’d been through it repeatedly in his thirty-three years. It wasn’t that, either.

It was just taking one look at Stoneclaw and _knowing_. Not because he was a panther -- Manchas, Mr. Big’s driver, had been terrified by an otter one tenth his size. And it wasn’t because he was a predator: Fangmeyer might have been a hundred-and-twenty pound wolf, but he’d been choked up for a week after his pet parakeet died, even shed a tear over the condolence card Judy had bought him.

But one look at Stoneclaw, in the fur, and Nick knew that was a very dangerous predator. Danger wore different coats: putting on a metal helmet in a lightning storm, walking out into traffic with your eyes shut, annoying Bogo, meeting Bellwether in a darkened museum after you’d just uncovered her plot. He might not know exactly in what way Stoneclaw was dangerous, but he had a feeling it was more the ruin-your-life kind than the collateral-damage-from-stupidity kind.

And Judy appeared not to have sensed it at all. She got into the elevator after the Chief with every appearance that shaking the new mayor’s hand was a perfectly normal activity for a Friday morning.

To be fair, for her it pretty much was.

But Judy’s danger-meter was not terribly functional. Threatening a feared crime boss while totally outnumbered by massive polar bears was the kind of thing Judy did on a Tuesday.

And he couldn’t even tell himself, “At least I’m around to keep her from walking blindly into traffic,” because Judy had some inborn ability to warp reality around her. Somehow or other, they’d get into some of the worst trouble of Nick’s life (and funny enough, the list was mostly dated from the day he’d met Judy), and then come out a lot better than they went in, in ways that should definitely not have happened.

That didn’t make him feel any better about being on Stoneclaw’s Politico-meter. He’d pretty well implied he’d be using Judy’s record to shake mammals up. That would be fine with Nick if he or Judy were the ones planning the shaking.

The trick, though, would be being more clever and slippery than that damn panther.

Bogo shouldered open the glass front doors of City Hall and paused on the steps outside. While Judy retrieved their ponchos and gigantic umbrella from the porcupines at the door, Nick watched the Chief. He had the look of a buffalo about to inhale deep lungfuls of fresh air to cleanse the sour stuff he’d been breathing all morning.

“Here we are,” said Judy, reappearing with that damn umbrella that was too adorably big for her, reminding Nick of the Urge that he was going to have to shelve for the day, and forever if he was lucky. Maybe the homicide would help.

Judy, oblivious to his internal crisis, was looking out the glass doors. “At least the rain appears to have lightened up a bit.”

She was right: at the moment, it was more of a mist, collecting on Chief Bogo and dampening his shoulders as Nick and Judy joined him under Judy’s extra-large umbrella.

“You two,” Bogo grunted, “get to the Natural History Museum. I want you taking over from Grizzoli and Fangmeyer.”

He was glaring almost wistfully across the square toward the museum. Nick and Judy traded looks.

“Yes, sir,” she said.

Nick closed his mental claws around the instinct of an idea. He didn’t think about it; he just picked it up. “You’re not coming, Chief?”

The Chief looked down at him from a neck-cracking height. “Do I usually tag along on homicide investigations, Wilde?”

“It would give this case a definite, strong, _political_ slant,” Nick said.

“Yes,” said Bogo, a thread of longing in his weary, irascible tone. “It would.”

Then he stalked off, across the mostly empty square toward the ZPD. There was something lonely about it, everything damp and empty and the sky as dark as twilight.

“What do you think that was about?” Judy asked quietly, watching him go.

“If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say the Chief is having some sort of internal crisis.”

 _‘Officer Hopps has the most arrests and convictions on the Force in her first year since -- why, since yourself, Chief Bogo, if my memory serves,’_ Stoneclaw had said. And now Bogo sat behind a desk and fielded politics.

Nick felt something like sorry for him. Between the two, however, Bogo was a lot safer from Stoneclaw than Judy was. If he’d got to be Chief in the first place, he was pretty good at fielding politics. The same was yet to be said of Judy.

* * *

Outside the Natural History Museum, Nick saw the ambulance’s flashing lights had drawn a crowd despite the rain. They clustered on the proper side of the caution tape, reporters (there were always more reporters) and bystanders and large amounts of children.

Inside the museum, the reason for all the kids became clearer: several groups of school kids had intended to seek refuge from the rain in historical and geographical bliss, and now Grizzoli and Francine were having to turf them out of the museum. Grizzoli looked relieved to greet some form of backup, even if it was two mammals who together weren’t even one-fifth his size.

“Thank God,” he growled. “Help us throw these folks out, would you?”

“Doing a great job, Sarge,” said Nick. Judy was already chivvying a small group of kids and their teacher towards the doors. “Small” was relative to their size; at least half of them were bigger than she was. Francine had the easiest time: she just headed toward them like a galleon in full sail and they either gave way or her gently unstoppable momentum bore them out the door.

“I want to know why this is happening!” said an irate zebra as Francine serenely propelled her out. “We’ve been organizing this trip for _weeks_ , we’ve _paid_ \--”

“Please direct all inquires to the Natural History Museum,” said Nick pleasantly, and shut the doors in their faces.

“That damn zebra was treating me like I was a school-cub again,” Grizzoli said as a tiger on the museum’s security force locked the doors.

“Teachers can get like that,” said Judy. “My sister Katie teaches the third grade and thinks everyone is about eight years old.”

“Do you try to arrest everyone at home?” Nick asked.

“I didn’t arrest you for stealing my kimchi, did I?”

“Why are you two here, anyway?” Grizzoli asked. “Thanks for the help corralling the nursery crowd, but it really wasn’t necessary.”

“Thought you’d still be eating little fancy meatballs off sticks,” said Francine, “rubbing elbows with the bigwigs.”

“The Chief sent us,” said Judy. “To take over from you and Fangmeyer.”

Grizzoli could have looked annoyed, but he only pursed his lips and shrugged. “Fangmeyer’s upstairs,” he said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. “With the vic and the museum director. He’ll be happy to turn her over to you two. You know Fangmeyer can’t deal with the blubbery ones.”

The museum today didn’t remind Nick of that time Bellwether’s thugs had almost pounded him and Judy to a fine paste because now it was well lit. Nor were the halls precisely empty: now, they entertained paramedics and cops.

The "blubbery" museum director was a svelte cheetah, wearing the improbable ensemble of a pastel blue dress suit with a pink bow tie. She was clutching a lacy handkerchief and when Nick and Judy reached her was saying, with the air of someone who’d said the same thing at least eleven times already, “I just don’t know how it could have happened. . .  _poor_ Mr. Moldwarp. . .”

She pressed her handkerchief over her mouth. Fangmeyer rolled a desperate eye at Judy. Most cops, Nick had discovered in his months on the force, preferred being shot at to dealing with any more mundane tasks, such as making small talk at parties or comforting distraught members of the public. It made a certain sense.

“Here, Hopps -- Ms. Haraka, this is Officer Hopps, she’ll -- uh --” He mumbled a string of syllables meant to pass for words. “Wilde, with me.”

He herded Nick over to a fat pillar, next to an exhibit of a zebra who was learning to walk upright, surrounded by placid-eyed ancestors who still thought that being close to the grass was the best career move.

“You’re pathetic, Fangmeyer,” Nick said genially.

“That’s Sergeant to you, Wilde,” Fangmeyer said without any ill will. “Look, maybe Hopps can do something with her, she just keeps repeating that he was a sweet little mole and who’d want to hurt him and she can’t believe he’s dead.”

“ _I_ can’t believe Grizzoli and Francine left her to _you_.” Nick slid Fangmeyer’s notebook out of his paws and read over his scribbles. “Sarge,” he added as Fangmeyer opened his mouth.

“Yeah, well, they didn’t want to deal with her either, did they?” Fangmeyer said gloomily. “Say, why are you and Hopps here anyway? Shouldn’t you be with the hoi polloi over at City Hall?”

“We _are_ the hoi polloi,” said Nick. “Can’t get more hoi polloi than us. Chief sent us. Your notes are useless, Sarge,” he said, handing the notebook back.

“It’ll be a miracle if you can get anything out of her,” Fangmeyer said, unoffended. “Some witnesses are just like that. _You_  know.”

“Who’s the vic?” Nick looked around; he couldn’t see a body, though he could hear the paramedics’ voices echoing. “Did you say a mole?”

“Yeah, tiny little guy, ’bout as big as a burrito. But,” he grinned, clapping Nick on the back with a paw that spanned his shoulderblades and almost buckled his knees. “I’m sure you’ll get the whole story from Haraka in two shakes, ey? No point in me wasting your valuables.”

“Of course,” said Nick pleasantly. “I’m sure Judy has it all worked out.”

They returned to Haraka and Judy, who’d sat the cheetah down on a convenient bench and was jotting quick notes in her book while Haraka clutched her handkerchief.

“. . . and he’s been here for _years_ \-- straight down from the Spine, no credentials, but he was so polite that I let him sit for an interview -- really _excellent_ at evaluating old fossils and metals and, well, just about everything, really. Oh, his poor wife, they’ve just lost their son, too, I can’t imagine how she’ll take this. . .”

Fangmeyer’s ears drooped as his jaw sagged open. Nick didn’t even try to reign in his smirk. That was one Urge he could indulge in safely.

“Shut it, Wilde,” Fangmeyer muttered out the side of his mouth.

“Consider it shut, Sarge. See you back at the station.”

Muttering, Fangmeyer shuffled off.

“I’d like you to take me through what happened this morning,” Judy said gently to Haraka.

“Oh, I. . . well, I came in around eight, like I always do. . . Todd, that’s the security guard, he’d been here since seven, taking over from the night shift. . .”

The tiger security guard had just shuffled into view. His muscles strained the seams of his security uniform. His small ears were drooping and his shoulders -- which were about as wide as Nick was tall -- were slumping. As Judy was occupied with Haraka, that left Todd to Nick.

The tiger was twisting his hat in his enormous paws as he stood there. Nick distinctly heard the sound of the polyester giving way to the power of a grip that had, thousands of years ago, been used to knock a wild boar flying at thirty miles an hour. Now he looked lost.

He didn’t notice Nick sliding up next to him. “Todd, is it?”

The tiger had to step back to see all the way down to Nick. “Yes, sir, Officer,” he said. Nice-seeming guy, Todd.

“Show me Mr. Moldwarp, could you?” Some mammals got upset if you said _the body_.

Todd took him past Haraka’s and Judy’s bench, around the fat pillar Fangmeyer had lurked against, across an exhibit devoted to early tools of the Bronze age, and over to the wall. A ventilation grille had been pulled loose and thrown to the side; lying in a sad little heap of black fur was a tiny mole in a odd-looking suit, which was completely nondescript -- as in, Nick had no idea how to describe it. It was black and had all the requisite places for arms and legs and the head to go, but it looked like a suit made by someone who only had vague ideas about what suits looked like. A yellow ribbon was pinned to the left breast. Nick had no idea what that signified.

“I pulled him out,” said Todd. “I found him inside the shaft there. I. . . I pulled him out to see if he was. . . and he was. So I left him there and called you guys. I didn’t want to leave him like that, but I. . . I know you’re not supposed to mess around. I just had to get him out of the shaft and check, you know?”

“Of course,” Nick said. Forensics wasn’t there yet, but he figured they had to be on their way. They only worked across the square.

He crouched down by Moldwarp and looked him over without touching him. Something Aurelia had said was nagging at him: ‘ _That’s gone all the way to the Spine. Even the Under King knows.’_

But what would the mole king, over five thousand miles away, have to do with a little mole turning up dead in a museum? They lived deep-down, moles. Word on the street was they considered it blasphemy to come up above ground. Whatever the moles thought, it was true you hardly ever saw moles on the streets of Zootopia. In fact, this poor guy might have been the first one he’d seen above basement level.

“Interesting suit,” said Nick.

“He always wore it,” said Todd sadly. “Or, well, one like it. He came straight from the Spine -- well, I mean, he’d been here for years, but you wouldn’t know it. Like he arrived yesterday.”

“Do you know how he--”

A clatter and babble of voices broke out of the main stairwell. Nick stood. “That’ll be forensics.”

Fiona-that’s- _Doctor Snowden_ -thank-you, a sable who hated the living, was heading the charge. Armed with her usual array of harassed techs who did all the literal heavy-lifting, she bore down on Nick, black fur bristling all over.

“You _moved the body_ ,” she said, the way Bogo would have said, _You ate a donut in front of me_.

“I’m very sorry, ma’am,” said Todd, twisting his hat clean in half.

Snowden looked him over, then dismissed him with a wave of her paw. “Damage is already done. If we can refrain from causing any more, I _might_ be able to do my job properly. Hoofson, tape off the area.”

Nick guided Todd away as forensics got to work with their number cards and cameras and various other items too scientific for a poor fox to name, like cotton swabs.

“Tell me what a normal day’s like,” he said to Todd.

“Today wasn’t normal,” said Todd, looking a bit lost.

“Right. Definitely not. But when it is?”

“I come in at seven.” Todd still sounded confused, but he’d clearly been hired to run security because of his massive size, not his combative personality. “Dom and I overlap, he leaves round seven-thirty. I say hi to Charlie when he comes in at eight -- he’s the tech, runs over the security footage each morning.”

“We’ll want to talk to him, too,” said Nick, wondering why this extremely useful mammal hadn’t been in Grizzoli’s grip.

“He didn’t come in today,” said Todd. “We tried calling but no answer. Goes straight to voicemail.”

Nick didn’t like the sound of that. Trying not to sound alarming, he asked, “Have you checked around here for him?”

“Yeah. He’s a chital, though, not little like Mr. Moldwarp. He’d be. . .” Todd’s face crumpled before he got shaky hold of himself. “Harder to hide.”

Which might have meant he’d been taken or complicit in whatever had happened to Moldwarp. “Has anyone been over the security footage from last night?”

“I don’t think so. It’s been nuts here this morning. I dunno when Miss Haraka would’ve had the time, and that was Charlie’s job. Everybody else has their own stuff to do.”

Nick glanced at Snowden and her crowd. He’d like to know how Moldwarp had died -- whatever had killed him hadn’t been visible, no twisted neck or streaks of blood -- but he’d have to wait for her report. She certainly wouldn’t volunteer it. He always had to let Judy deal with her; being himself around Snowden had a way of making her “lose” reports that should have found their way to him and Judy.

"How'd you find him?" Nick asked. "Moldwarp, I mean. If he was in the shaft."

"I. . ." Todd looked -- ashamed. Nick's ears lifted. "I smelled him," Todd said, almost whispering. "I know that's not. . . what you're supposed to do. My sense of smell's always been really sharp. And I knew he was. . . around and something wasn't. . . wasn't right."

Nick understood Todd's confusion, even his shame. When predators said things like that, it made them look. . . well, like animals. And as Bellwether had shown, as Stoneclaw had so astutely noted, that stirred at the dream of civilization.

“Show me Charlie's office?” he asked. It was the closest he could come to saying,  _I understand._

* * *

Ms. Haraka couldn’t bear to watch the forensics going over Mr. Moldwarp, so Judy suggested they retreat to her office. By eavesdropping on Nick and Todd, she knew they’d gone to look over the security footage. She’d see it eventually, and Nick could tell her what she missed until then. For the time being, she wanted to keep Ms. Haraka talking.

“Oh, he evaluates artifacts for us,” said Ms. Haraka, too distracted to notice or care that she’d said so before. With the swipe of a keycard, she took Judy through a plain door that led to the administrative offices. Though she was the director, Ms. Haraka’s office was cramped. A tiny window provided a dismal view of the vents on the lower roof, where puddles collected in the steadily falling rain.

“Like I said, he’s brilliant at it.” She sniffed as she sat down behind her desk and took a moment to breathe into her handkerchief. “Was. I suppose whatever he did back home in the Spine. . .”

“You don’t know what that was?” Judy could tell from the phrasing that Ms. Haraka hadn’t, but it would keep her talking.

“He does -- didn’t talk about it. Never. . . wanted to. It. . . felt like a delicate subject. And his son -- like I said, I don’t know what happened there, either. He’s -- was a very private mammal, Mr. Moldwarp.” She looked out her dismal little window, the thin black tear marks on all cheetahs’ eyes making her appear even more mournful. “Very polite, very kind, but. . . workforce bonding was never for him. He’d ask after my family but for him it. . . was always, ‘We are doing very well, thank you, Madam Haraka.’”

“How did you find out about his son?”

“He asked for a few days off. Mourning tradition, he said. ‘We have lost our son.’ That was all I ever heard.”

“You said you can’t think of anyone who’d want to hurt him. Is that because he was as private as he was?”

“None of it makes any sense,” said Ms. Haraka. Her sadness rippled with confusion. “We don’t even have anything very valuable here. Well, there’s the Furbergé eggs on loan, but in any case they’re all where they should be. _Everything’s_ where it should be. We have a team that checks that over every morning.”

“What about the security footage?” Even though Judy had heard Nick and Todd, she wanted to cross-check.

“Charlie’s not been in,” said Ms. Haraka. “He checks over that. I hope nothing’s happened to him either, we can’t get him. . .”

“We’ll have someone look for him. If you do hear from him, let us know immediately.”

“Yes, of course,” said Ms. Haraka, her gaze drifting toward the window again. “I just. . . can’t imagine what happened. . .”

In Judy’s experience, this was a common declaration: many mammals said they  _knew_ , standing ready with every detail, or to express complete bafflement. The truth often lay somewhere in between.

“What was Mr. Moldwarp working on last?” she asked.

“Oh. . . we’d had some old pots -- Bronze Age stuff, quite a rare find, excellent condition -- and he was looking over them to see if they were really what they seemed. But they were just _pots_.”

“And they’re where they should be?”

“As far as I know,” said Ms. Haraka, blinking as if it had just occurred to her that they might be somewhere else.

“Can you show me?”

The pots were, indeed, where Ms. Haraka said they should be, tucked into a well-padded box whose lid opened by combination lock. Mr. Moldwarp’s work area was tidy -- “As always,” said Ms. Haraka thickly. He worked on a tiny desk atop one built for a much larger mammal. Even his lamp was scaled to size, with a magnifying lens that Judy had trouble manipulating, it was so delicate. Ms. Haraka said everything looked all right, but in her state she might have easily overlooked something.

Forensics would go over the place, but Judy couldn’t see anything suspicious. Of course, he could have been attacked on his way out of the building. Hopefully Nick would have more luck with the security footage.

But when she and Ms. Haraka reached Charlie’s office --

“Doesn’t show a thing,” said Nick. Judy managed not to groan, at least not in front of Ms. Haraka and Mr. Growlzer, the security guard.

“It must show _something_ ,” said Ms. Haraka helplessly.

Mr. Growlzer restarted the footage. A time-stamp in the corner showed that it was just past two AM that day. Mr. Moldwarp, sitting behind his tiny magnifying lens, was working on the pots Ms. Haraka had shown Judy.

“Nothing happens for a while,” Nick said, speeding up the footage so that Mr. Moldwarp worked triple-time: checking each pot, making notes, taking photographs, packing them away. He never moved out of the camera’s range.

As the time stamp rolled over to 6:00 AM precisely, Nick set the footage back to play in real-time. Mr. Moldwarp tidied his workstation, clicked off his light, picked up his hat, and scurried down from his desk. The camera, remaining stationary, couldn’t follow him, so Nick switched the view to the hallway camera. At 6:05 AM Mr. Moldwarp came trotting down the hall toward the camera, then turned the corner, cutting off to another view.

Nick switched to that camera: the one overlooking the Bronze Age exhibit where Todd had found Mr. Moldwarp’s body in the vent. 6:05 AM. It showed only an empty room. 6:06 AM. Still empty. 6:07. . .

“And he never shows up,” Nick said. He sped up the footage again, until a badger in a security uniform matching Mr. Growlzer’s toddled into view at 7:14 AM. He, however, was doing only a cursory sweep.

“You can’t see the vent from this angle,” said Judy. “The pillar’s in the way.”

“It’s the only camera in the room,” said Ms. Haraka, almost tearful. Mr. Growlzer, too, looked. . . crushed. “It covers everything -- everything valuable -- excuse me--” She stepped out of the room.

“Copies?” Judy asked Nick in a low voice. Mr. Growlzer was staring blankly at the still frame of the hallway on the screen, as if he wasn’t really seeing it.

“Got ‘em,” said Nick, equally low. “Think we’re done here for now?” When Judy nodded, he said in a slightly louder voice, “We’ve got everything we need for now, Todd. If we need to talk to you again, we know where to reach you?”

They did, of course. Mr. Growlzer blinked, bringing himself back to the present, to the room with the rest of them. “Yes, sir,” he said.

A similar goodbye to Ms. Haraka, who was openly crying, and they were heading out, leaving forensics alone with Mr. Moldwarp and whatever evidence they could find.

“And this next bit will be even less fun,” Nick said, opening the large umbrella.

* * *

The Moldwarps’ address was on Nick’s new side of town, though further out: the tail end of the mountain range that still belonged to Zootopia city proper. Judy had never been out that far, but Nick knew it, as he knew every part of Zootopia.

The drive through the rain took a good hour, what with all the traffic jams and fender-benders that slowed traffic to a crawl. She followed Nick’s directions down side-streets and sometimes alleys, slantwise across main thoroughfares clogged with frazzled drivers, and finally up the sloping streets to the foot of the green mountains at the edge of the Marshlands. Judy was sick of the thump-thump of the wiper blades by the time she turned off the car.

“They used to mine for peat out here,” Nick said as they climbed out of the car onto the sloping road. Rain pattered on the overlarge umbrella she’d bought, as he held it over their heads. “The miners’d tunnel through the mountains to make homes. It’s just cheap housing now. You get a lot of mammals moving in who come down from the north for the first time.”

“From what they said at the museum,” Judy said, “you don’t get much further north than the part of the Spine Mr. Moldwarp came from.”

The street was cracked and pitted; the entrance to the mountain looked exactly like a mine shaft. It stood open, a spotted metal sign nailed over the opening: _Miners’ Way_. Judy wouldn’t have been surprised if the sign itself was at least a hundred years old. The style reminded her of Bunnyburrow’s old downtown.

“Not a terribly creative naming sense, but it gets the job done,” Nick said.

Inside, a low, wide tunnel lined with old shops on either side led straight into the mountain. Some of the shops were closed permanently, rusted metal grilles pulled across dusty glass. Others still kept business running, everything from shoes to vegetables to magazines and candy and beer. The only public light source came from old mercury-powered lights set in the ceiling, some of which had broken and never been replaced. Judy had to squint to see and envied Nick’s better night vision.

“How do we find. . . oh,” she said as Nick pointed the umbrella at a grubby metal sign nailed to the wall. A flickering mercury light overhead made it difficult to read, but she shone her phone’s light at the snarl of criss-crossing lines that indicated old mine shafts, now repurposed for streets.

“Muckraker Way,” Nick said, dragging a claw along the mine shaft line. “That’s where we’ll find the wife.”

Judy was always glad to have a partner, and especially thankful that partner was Nick. Sometimes -- not often, but yes, at times -- she recalled that first night in her apartment alone, after a day of indifference and belittlement, or remembered that hopeless stretch when she’d left Zootopia and returned home, and felt like she was standing in the shadow of what her life could have been. On calls like this, that feeling intensified to a nameless certainty, so sharp it was a kind of fear, that it could so easily have gone some other way.

She could deal with a condolence call like this. She’d have dealt with it with or without Nick, because it was part of the job. But the fact that she didn’t _have_ to deal with it alone was -- well.

It was important.

“Have you ever been down here?” she asked quietly. The weight of the mountain seemed to absorb her voice; the dirt floors swept away all sound of their footsteps. For the first time in nearly twenty hours, she couldn’t hear the rain. She’d grown up in a burrow; underground didn’t scare her, but there was something almost unsettling here about the way sounds just. . . became silence.

“Not to this particular shaft,” said Nick. “I know a guy--”

“Of course you do,” she murmured, smiling for the first time in hours.

“--of course I do. Badger named Roger. He. . . works from home, lives uptown a bit. Ah, here we are.”

“Here” was an elevator, if that was the term for something so old. It was more of a wooden frame that hopefully would make it down as well as back up again. They had to pull the accordion grille across it and punch the floor (thirty-seven) into a detachable box hanging from a thick wire. With a grinding noise that stood Judy’s fur on end, the elevator lurched upward.

“Just think, loads of mammals use this every day,” said Nick, “and they don’t die.”

“Yes, thank you, Nick.” She would not grab onto the -- well, there wasn’t a railing, just the dirt wall of the shaft. That left Nick. She wouldn’t grab onto Nick.

“The odds against us breaking the statistic should be pretty good,” he said. “What do you want to bet?”

“I know what I _don’t_ want to bet,” she said.

The elevator lurched to a sudden stop and then, instead of continuing its descent upward, juddered backwards. Judy tried peering over Nick’s arm and around the umbrella. In the dimness, she thought they were moving out across a wide open space with yawning emptiness on either side, stretching far, far below.

“Conserving space,” said Nick, his arms locked tight around her. “Good idea.”

“Keeps us upright,” said Judy, maintaining her grip around his waist.

They swayed with the elevator as it swung to a stop and stood clumped together for a moment longer, both finding that letting go wasn’t as appealing a prospect as holding on. But a family of astonished voles staring at them from the waiting platform goaded them to release each other -- with official nonchalance -- and to step off the elevator onto solid ground.

“Is there another way out of here?” Judy muttered as the elevator and its party of voles swung off. The elevator’s wires creaked and clacked. She wanted to rub the fur flat on her arms.

“Probably,” said Nick. “But it would take a good two days to walk it.”

Judy had thought she’d a good sense of direction underground, but whether it was the vast network of mountain tunnels, the oppressive darkness, or the elevator ride, she had no idea where they were. Nick had no apparent trouble, so she followed his lead. Instead of taking the mine shaft at the end of the landing platform, he set off up a trail carved into the rockface. To their right, the dizzying drop into the dark, peppered with flares of lamplight, whispered with the chittering of all the mammals who lived there.

“Hm,” said Nick, stopping. “Well, here it is. . .”

They both stared at the small opening in the cave wall. They could fit into it, but even Judy was going to have to crawl.

“I. . . hope the house isn’t mole-sized,” Judy said. “Talking to her outside in the street is going to be awkward.”

“Clawhauser didn’t _say_ it was a dead mole, did he?” Nick asked, eyes narrowed at the entrance to Muckraker Way. “I don’t remember him saying it. But if Grizzoli or Fangmeyer had kept on this case. . .”

“Even more awkward for them,” sighed Judy, crouching down. At least Muckraker Way was better lit than the cavern. “Should we leave the umbrella?”

“Not if we want to see it again,” said Nick. “This still ain’t Bunnyburrow.”

In the early days, Nick had made a habit of picking her pockets, to demonstrate that she always needed to be on her guard in Zootopia, city of a thousand thieves. She’d gotten good at twisting his fingers when he tried to swipe something. “I’m proud of you,” he’d said, shaking out his paw. “Any prouder and I’d need a splint.”

Muckraker Way was almost tall enough for her to keep her ears up, if she’d wanted to, but standing up was out of the question, and it wasn’t wide enough for them to crawl side-by-side. As in the upper-level shaft, all outside sounds vanished. She’d never been inside someplace so silent. 

Luckily, Nick didn’t keep quiet for long. “This is fun,” he said. “Compared to that death-trap elevator, of course.”

“You were the one who _had_ to talk about survival statistics as we were swinging over the bottomless pit. How close are we?”

Nick didn’t get to answer -- other than an, “Ow!” -- because a wolverine had just charged around a blind corner and smashed their foreheads together.

“Watch where you’re going,” the wolverine snapped, then got a good look at who he’d run into. “Copper,” he sneered, leering at Judy as he shouldered past, not bothering to take up less than his fair share of the shaft.

“What a charming asshole,” Nick muttered, making Judy giggle.

“At least he’s not a politician,” she said.

“Heaven forfend.” With a wary look around the corner, he said, “Looks wolverine free. Moldwarp’s place should be just up here.”

The number over the door matched the one Judy had written down. The door was thankfully not mole-sized; Nick, the wolverine, and his friend Roger the Badger could each have fit through it. She hoped the house beyond was of a matching size as she knocked on the door.

When no one answered after several long moments, she and Nick traded wary looks in the dark, sound-swallowing corridor.

“If she’s not. . .” Nick started to say, but broke off, his ears lifting as bolts clicked behind the door.

It opened, and a tiny mole face appeared in the gap. Moles’ eyes were so small they weren’t immediately visible, giving the impression that they weren’t actually there. In the poor lighting, Judy felt she was looking at a patch of darkness with paws and a snout.

“Mrs. Moldwarp?” she asked.

“Yes?” The mole turned her snout toward Nick, suggesting she was looking between him and Judy.

“I’m Officer Hopps, this is Officer Wilde. Your husband is Erwin Moldwarp?” At the nod -- the snout moving up and down, after a pause -- Judy said, “We need to speak with you about your husband. May we please come in?”

Another pause, and then the mole moved back, letting the door fall open.

“So you have found him,” she said. “And you are here to tell me is dead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA: lookit the thinnnngggg secret soup drew:
> 
> http://secret-soup.tumblr.com/post/143090003476/i-really-liked-this-supporting-character-dr
> 
> *anguished droid noises*


	6. In the Bone

Nick really hated informing spouses that their other half was deceased. Even if you could’ve counted on them holding it together, it wasn’t the kind of news he wanted to be anywhere near giving out. Selfishly, he always let Judy handle it.

The spouse usually didn’t say, “Figured he was dead,” though.

In her cave, Moldwarp’s widow -- now the only Moldwarp, he supposed -- lit a candle for them. It was a birthday candle, the kind you’d put on a kid’s cake, pink with white stripes. It barely gave off any light. Though he wouldn't want to try reading any fine print, he fared all right in the dark; but Judy was clearly trying not to squint.

“Did you report Mr. Moldwarp missing, ma’am?” Judy asked. If the ZPD had known the guy was missing and not told them, Nick was going to be putting some laxatives in someone’s coffee.

But Mrs. Moldwarp said, “No.” And that was it. She sat in her chair with her large paws -- large relative to her size, that was -- resting on her knees. She might have been looking at them, or staring into space, or down at the floor. Her eyes were too small to see.

“Why not?” Judy asked gently.

“Who would I tell?” Mrs. Moldwarp asked after a long pause. It was more of a statement, besides.

Nick wondered if that was practicality (foxes knew that a lot of the times when you went to the cops, you got treated like both the problem and the solution; was it the same for moles?) or. . . something else.

He always said he knew everyone, and in a very real sense he did. He knew whoever he needed to know, the mammals that kept Zootopia running on the level of warp and woof. And he knew Zootopia: the streets and canals and floes and dunes. But in Mrs. Moldwarp’s case -- in that barren parlor gouged out of the rock, where the birthday candle carved shadows out of the dark -- he knew he didn’t know a damn thing.

He didn’t like that feeling. He spent all that time and energy and willpower learning everybody and everywhere so he didn’t have to feel that way.

“Mrs. Moldwarp, we found your husband at his place of employment, in the Natural History Museum,” said Judy.

Mrs. Moldwarp’s snout rose in Judy’s direction, as if she was looking straight at her. But she didn’t say anything.

Nick would’ve liked to smooth down the fur on the back of his neck. Something was really odd about this whole thing -- odder than the individual parts, which were odd enough on their own.

“How long was he missing?” Judy asked when she didn’t receive a reply. Nick admired her self-possession.

“He did not come home,” said Mrs. Moldwarp. “After work, he always comes home.”

“That’s only a few hours,” said Nick. “But you expected something -- fatal had happened, in that time?”

Mrs. Moldwarp turned her snout in his direction. He found he didn’t like not being able to read her expressions -- though Bellwether had had a perfectly open, expressive face, and see where that had got them.

“Down here,” said Mrs. Moldwarp, “I find the animals do not know. But we know when our mate has died, Mr. Officer Wilde. We feel it. . .” she paused, as if searching for the right expression. “In the bone.”

Wouldn’t Chief Bogo love that. Nick could write in his report: _Wife of the deceased sensed his death through psychic bond_ , and get shouted down to the carpet.

And yet he’d still really like to smooth down his fur.

“When did you first -- experience the feeling?” Judy asked, not sounding skeptical, which was more than Nick could’ve aimed for.

“I do not know how to tell the time to you,” said Mrs. Moldwarp. “It does not matter to me. But it was the time he usually left work. Perhaps -- six of this day.”

Nick had to look at Judy then. She glanced quickly at him, then back at Mrs. Moldwarp.

“No one called?” Judy said. “No one from the museum, no friends, not Mr. Moldwarp himself?”

“No,” said Mrs. Moldwarp, and left it at that.

“I’m sorry,” said Judy, “but we need to ask you some questions about your son.”

Mrs. Moldwarp bowed her head. When she didn’t refuse, Judy went on.

“How did he pass on?”

“He is not dead,” said Mrs. Moldwarp, raising her snout. “He went back home.”

All the goddamn blind corners were starting to make Nick’s ears itch.

“Ms. Haraka, the museum director, said Mr. Moldwarp took time off for mourning,” said Judy.

“Our son renounced us,” said Mrs. Moldwarp. “We are dead to him. He left us behind. We shall never see him again. It was -- like death. We mourned him.”

“Renounced you?” Judy asked carefully. “Can you explain--?”

Mrs. Moldwarp made a sound like a sigh. Nick supposed they were extremely bothersome, blundering around without any idea what had happened to her husband, in death or in life. Hell, since they’d walked in here, she’d known more than they did about it.

“He did not like Zootopia. He did not think we could be--” She paused again, as if searching for words. “--proper moles here. He thought we had left behind everything important. My husband and I did not agree. We quarreled. And broke.” She sighed again. “Our son did not kill his father.”

“We’re only trying to determine who did kill your husband, Mrs. Moldwarp,” Judy said with calm, collected kindness. Mrs. Moldwarp probably saw that wasn’t an answer, but she let it pass.

“Do you have more questions?” she asked, as if it hardly mattered.

“What did the ribbon on his chest mean?” Nick asked abruptly. “The yellow one.”

“For the Under King. We live in Zootopia, but we are still moles.”

“Did something happen with the Under King recently?” he asked. In his peripheral vision, he saw candlelight glint off Judy’s eyes as she glanced his way.

“There is a new king,” said Mrs. Moldwarp. “The old one has died, a new king elected. We support the new king. We are moles.”

A new Under King, watching Zootopia, according to Aurelia.

He and Judy conferred silently on what to do next.

“Thank you, Mrs. Moldwarp,” said Judy. She said something else consoling, the best thing you could say in a situation like that, when words couldn’t possibly work. Nick, however, wasn’t really listening. He was busy thinking about something else he’d rather not.

That Smarter than Regular Nick voice had been discreetly trying to get his attention all morning, and now it had it by the tail. _You know what you need to do_ , it said. As a matter of fact, the voice was starting to sound a bit like Judy.

Yeah. He did know.

He was going to have to talk to Aurelia.

* * *

“Well, that was outside of expectation,” Nick muttered as they stood waiting -- on solid rock, thankfully -- for the shoddy elevator to arrive.

“Have you. . .” Judy hesitated.

Nick turned his head toward her. In the lamp-tinted darkness, his eyes were almost black. “Hmm?”

“I know you didn’t believe her,” said Judy. “I could feel the disbelief coming off you in waves.” (Nick snorted.) “But have you ever heard -- that claim before?”

“Some sort of psychic soul bond?” Cynicism shifted across Nick’s face. “Like we’re in _Paw Wars_ and the Force is real?”

She rolled her eyes and nudged him. “It sounded more like a belief system.”

Nick shrugged. The far-off lights muted his fur to a deep rust red. “People say all kinds of weird things when they hear someone’s died. Especially if they love them.”

Yes. They’d heard a lot of those things in their time with the ZPD. And as a little girl, Judy had listened for years to her Uncle Nate’s stories of chasing after the ghost of her Aunt Jessie, whom he swore was always running ahead of him, waiting to be caught. Everyone humored him because they hadn’t known what else to do.

“I don’t really know anything about the Spine,” she said. “I mean, other than the basics.”

“Me neither.” Nick didn’t sound happy about it. He was used to knowing everyone.

“I guess we’ll be doing some research,” Judy said.

Nick muttered what might have been a “yes” or “research can go to hell.” His odd mood from that morning seemed to have returned. Well, the Chief wasn’t around this time, and the most immediate of their worst tasks was done with for the moment. . .

“Nick,” she said, “what’s bothering you?”

His ears swiveled up, then tucked down. His answering look was almost wary. “Bothering me?”

“You’ve been acting odd today.”

He opened his mouth -- and appeared to make a clacking noise. A split second later, she realized it was the elevator swinging ponderously toward them.

“Oh good,” said Nick, “the death-trap’s here.”

“Don’t curse it. Or us.” She hooked a paw around his forearm; he looked down at it as if it was the prelude to finding himself shoved out into empty black space. “Nick, really--”

“Ah -- move aside, Officer Hopps.” Using his elbow, he nudged her out of the way of a large family of disembarking civets. 

“I’d say ‘bunnies first,’” he said, “but in this case, you follow, should the cables snap and I plunge to my untimely death--”

“Oh, get a move on.” She pushed him onto the elevator. “I’m trying to have a conversation and you and this elevator are in cahoots--”

“‘Cahoots’? I’m unfamiliar with that technical police terminology.”

“Fine,” she growled as the elevator swung into motion, carrying them over the chasm and trying to leave her heart and stomach back on the platform. “Bottle it up all you want. But if you let it out on Bogo and he tries to kill you, I’ll--”

“Let him?” The lighting was even more terrible on the elevator, but Nick’s smile was audible.

“No, but I’m going to make you pay for the rescue. A _lot_.”

“A week of listening to Gazelle non-stop?”

“Just for _starters_.”

“ _Speaking_ of threats to freeze the blood,” he said. “I--”

They both stumbled and caught each other as the elevator lurched.

“Wish it wouldn’t do that,” Nick muttered.

The elevator dropped a foot or more. Nick’s arms clamped around her back, and Judy grabbed onto his waist.

The elevator was tilting.

They overbalanced and tumbled across the floorboards as the elevator tipped, the cables making a ripping, almost silken sound as overhead they broke apart.

Judy grabbed the umbrella from Nick and hooked the handle over one of the support poles as the box rolled onto its side and they swung over empty, black space like a pendulum. As the elevator spun down Nick reached up and seized the pole with one paw, clamping the other arm around Judy.

Clinging to the falling elevator, they plummeted through the dark. Judy could barely see, but she knew the cables must have snapped completely.

“I can’tbelieve I’msayingthis,” Nick’s arm was almost squeezing the breath out of her, or maybe that was the realization of imminent death, “but we’regoingtojump!”

“Turnabout’s--fair play!” she gasped.

He swung them up; they each braced against the pole and pushed off as hard as they could. Judy half wanted to shut her eyes -- she couldn’t see anything anyway, except streaking motes of light -- but she wanted to _look_ at the last thing she might ever see. She looked up at Nick, who was still hanging onto her, his expression a cross between intense concentration and terror --

He yelped as they hit something icy and wet and hit it hard.

 _Water tank_ , Judy thought as they dropped through black water.

They kicked to the surface, Nick coughing.

“Well,” he said, spitting out water, “it’s been awhile since we free-fell to almost certain death.”

“As long as it’s the almost-certain part.” She grabbed the edge of the tank and hauled herself over the rim.

Mammals had collected on the levels above them, pointing, appalled and curious. Judy squinted up through the darkness, wondering how far they’d fallen. The drop had seemed to last forever, and yet “forever” took barely a heartbeat when you thought it was the last heartbeat you were ever going to have.

“Psychic bonds and vengeful elevators,” said Nick, wringing out his tail. “The Chief’s going to really love our report.”

* * *

Riding around in wet, icy clothes wasn’t the most fun Nick had ever had, but it beat the death-defying free-fall.

He’d have preferred to weasel out of that conversation with Judy without getting soaked to the skin or nearly killed, but he supposed he’d have to take what he could get.

There was just the little matter of. . .

Clawhauser almost spat out a donut when they sloshed into the station.

“What _happened_ to you guys?” he said, brushing crumbs off the dispatch monitor.

“We made one too many jokes at the expense of an elderly elevator,” Nick said sourly.

“ _We_?” said Judy.

“Is that Wilde and Hopps?” grunted Bogo’s voice, and he came around the partition that backed the front desk. He blinked at Judy and Nick, who were trying to drip as discreetly as possible on the floor.

“I don’t even want to know,” he said heavily. “Go. Clean up. My office when you don’t look like a pair of drowned rats.”

“I can’t believe we’ve ended up drenched in twice as many days,” Judy muttered as they squished off. “And I _really_ need to wring out my ears.”

They parted at the changing rooms. Nick decided to go ahead and shower, since that tank wasn’t the freshest he’d ever been dunked in.

The hot water felt good. It gave him time to pull the picture of the cavern up in his head, like the missing Charlie's security footage. Had he seen what he thought? Or had it just been a flash in the dark, the long shadow of paranoia?

There: as they were falling, up on a high ledge where the cables connected to the rock. . .

He switched off the water, feeling cleaner but grim. He’d seen it. He had a hunch what it meant.

He just didn’t have any proof. That probably wouldn’t matter to Judy, but to anyone else in the station it would be a deal-breaker. Especially to the Chief.

Since his uniform was now a pile of sodden rags, he had to resort to the sweatpants and t-shirt every cop kept in their locker in case they wound up with blood all over them. Or in Nick and Judy’s case, dredging themselves out of a water tank.

Dressed again and dry, he headed out on snack safari. Clawhauser always kept an emergency stash in the breakroom fridge, and everybody knew better than to touch it. Nick got special perks because he fed/bribed Clawhauser more than anyone else at the station. Judy surely could have gotten in on the deal, but she was usually too conscientious to take advantage of a standing invitation.

Grizzoli, Fangmeyer, and McHorn were taking up excessive amounts of space in the break room, as enormous mammals were wont to do. They were crowded around something at the same table, looking a mixture of fascinated and appalled. When Nick pushed the door open, they hastily rearranged their faces and tried to discreetly whip whatever-it-was out of sight.

“Oh, you’re not Bogo,” said Fangmeyer with obvious relief.

“Well-spotted, Sarge.” Nick opened the fridge and rooted around on Clawhauser’s shelf. He’d really have liked about six pounds of fried fish and a banana fudge sundae, but he’d settle for a peanut butter and strawberry jelly sandwich.

“And lucky for you,” Nick said, shutting the fridge, “because you guys have got the worst fake innocent faces I’ve ever seen.”

“No worse than yours,” McHorn snorted.

“This is just the way my face looks.” Nick leaned back against the fridge door and took a bite out of his, or Clawhauser’s, sandwich. “Do I want to know what you’re hiding over there?”

“I, uh, dunno,” said Fangmeyer, looking shifty.

“Oh, dear,” said Nick. “ _Now_ I’m worried.”

Grizzoli swiped the thing from under Fangmeyer’s paw and held it up. It was a magazine. A three-page spread unfolded from the center, showing--

Nick managed not to choke on his sandwich, but it was a near thing. He’d seen things like that before, naturally, but you didn’t expect to have it waved in your face when you were having a snack in broad daylight. It was more the thing people traded under counters in rooms with blacked out windows. “What the hell are you doing with _that_?”

“Guess that’s a ‘no,’” said Grizzoli, smirking as he tossed it back on the table.

“Perp we’ve just processed,” said McHorn. “Had a whole stash of these. And that ain’t even touching the videos.”

“You took that out of evidence?”

Fangmeyer looked a bit guilty; Grizzoli shrugged; McHorn was wearing a smirk of his own.

“There’s loads more where that came from,” he said. “They won’t miss it.”

“Forget the Chief,” said Nick. “What would you have done if _Judy_ walked in here and saw you reading--that?”

He might as well have asked what they’d do if their grandmothers walked in. Their faces performed some interesting contortions.

“We’re not -- _into_ it,” said Fangmeyer. “It’s just -- you know how sometimes you see something and you can’t, like, make yourself look away?” He was turning the pages of the magazine over, that fascinated but repulsed expression back on his face. Both McHorn and Grizzoli stared along with him, clearly knowing exactly how he felt.

“I mean, when you see _this_ \--” He held up the open magazine, and Nick wondered if you could disconnect your eyes so they wouldn’t send signals to your brain.

Which, of course, was the moment that Judy did walk in.

It wouldn’t be enough to say everyone froze. It was more like crystallization, preserving them in that one, perfectly mortifying moment. On some level, it was hilarious. The looks on Fangmeyer’s, Grizzoli’s, and McHorn’s faces _were_ hilarious. Nick would have taken a picture, except whenever he looked at he’d have to remember that he’d been there too.

Fangmeyer dropped the magazine, possibly in an attempt to de-criminate himself. Unfortunately, it fell to the floor and the three page spread popped out.

They all stared at it, transfixed.

“That’s not mine,” said Fangmeyer.

“Evidence,” said McHorn. “Under review.”

“Case,” said Grizzoli. “It’s--for a case.”

Judy shut her eyes. She held up a paw. No one said anything.

She backed out of the room, eyes still shut. Nobody moved, not even to pick up the magazine. It was possible they didn’t want to touch it, in case something nearly as bad happened, like the Chief or their grandmothers walking in.

Nick straightened from where he’d been leaning against the fridge.

“ _You three_.” He pointed his sandwich at them. They almost flinched, despite the fact that each of them could’ve tied him into a pretzel knot. “Are going to _owe me_. For what I am about to have to do.”

“Sorry, Nick,” said Fangmeyer, spinelessly. The other two mumbled along with him.

“I will _think_ about how you’ll have to make this up to me.” He started toward the door, thought better of it, turned and grabbed another sandwich from Clawhauser’s stash, and left with one last look of searing recrimination.

Out in the hall, Judy was leaning against the wall. Her head was hanging down, her ears flat, and her shoulders were shaking.

“Uh. . .” said Nick. He bent down, trying to get a look at her face.

She was laughing.

“Oh, God,” Judy wheezed. She clutched her stomach. “Their f-faces. . . oh my _God_. . .”

“Shh!” Nick grabbed her and hustled her along the corridor to their cubicle. “You’ve got to act dazed and appalled.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re mortified and we can play that to our advantage.”

She climbed up into her chair, wiping at her eyes. “Oh. . . that was a good laugh. . .”

“Don’t get me wrong.” He elbow-nudged her, holding out the sandwich. “I’m glad I’m not having to sentence us to a load of hail Marys, but. . .”

“You expected to? Ooh, strawberry.” Judy picked the crust off her sandwich first and ate it. “ _Now_ you’re concerned. After walking me blind into a naturalist colony.” Her expression was as pointed as the sandwich he’d aimed at the others in the breakroom.

“ _That_ got the level of shock I’d expected.” 

“More like 'looked forward to.' All right, so this was fairly shocking, too -- but their _faces_.” She tried to muffle her giggles in the sandwich. “Pretty sure you were all at least as shocked than I was.” She wrinkled her nose. “What _was_ that?”

“Uh. . . fetish magazine.” Okay, so Judy wasn’t scarred for life, but he was still going to make McHorn and Co. pay for this part of the conversation.

She looked at his face, and then giggled. She tried to stop but that only made it worse. “Oh dear. It was a bunny fetish, wasn’t it? Oh, come on, I’m not going to have a heart attack. Even if that animal looked. . . really large. Um.”

Nick couldn’t take it; he put a paw over his eyes. Judy let out a peal of laughter, then tried to smother it.

“Sorry, forgot; dazed and appalled.”

“Now _I’m_ tempted to go to Bogo,” he muttered. “And tell him a thing or two.”

“Don’t you _dare_. I want to get something out of this. We’ll have to think of something good -- but not take too long or their guilt might wear off. . .”

She polished off her last bite of sandwich, which Nick found distinctly unfair, because all of _his_ mental scarring had prevented him from finishing his.

“Come on,” she said thickly. “We should go see the Chief about the Moldwarp case.”

“Right.”

Grizzoli, Fangmeyer, and McHorn were just emerging from the breakroom as Nick and Judy rounded that corner of the hall.

“Boys,” Judy said in a distant, glassy tone. Nick didn’t have to fake the dark look he shot them.

The big mammals found they had somewhere else to get very quickly. This was lucky, because Judy started giggling as soon as the tufted tip of Grizzoli’s tail disappeared around the corner.

“Carrots,” Nick sighed, looping an arm around her neck and dragging her up the stairs. “You’re going to spoil our fun.”

“ _I’_ m having fun. You’re the one who’s under a cloud. And I don’t mean the weather.” She hooked her paw over his forearm. “When you’re ready to talk to me about that, go ahead.”

The warmth was going to kill him: was going to detach something that should stay bolted, cut it loose. Fangmeyer, Grizzoli and McHorn should’ve kept their goddamn bunny fetish magazines out of the breakroom, but that had just been killing time. He was he one whose behavior was going to fuck him over. He’d thought he was stupid when it came to Aurelia, but it turned out he was just stupid.

 _Don’t look down,_ he thought, as if he was stepping onto that elevator that had almost killed them. Maybe in some asinine metaphorical sense he was. But in a literal sense, looking down at Judy right now would be an epically bad idea.

“Oh, Christ,” said Bogo’s voice.

Nick blinked at the Chief’s office door, which was right in front of him. He and Judy turned. Bogo was standing behind them, holding a cup of coffee and looking like he wished it was filled with poison to put him out of misery.

“I say no paw-holding,” he said. “I get ear-whispering. I say no ear-whispering, and I get cuddling.”

“I apologize, sir. I was dazed and appalled,” said Judy, giving Nick’s arm a final squeeze before stepping away. “I just heard there’s a bunny fetishist in the building.”

Bogo’s look of horror outdid all the others’. It could’ve been used to chisel hieroglyphics on a stone wall.

“We are _never_ talking about that,” he said. There was just a slightly mangled squeak in his voice. “And if I _ever_ find out _who told you_ \--”

He thrust a manila folder at them. “Take this. Go someplace else. NOW.”

Judy took the file; they both turned and left the chief muttering to himself as he tried to open his office door.

Nick wished the Chief had shouted at them for a while. It would have gone at least some way to helping calm him down.

* * *

Judy was getting worried about Nick. That magazine thing should have amused him at least as much as it had her, and the prospect of winkling favors out of Fangmeyer and McHorn should have tasted like manna from heaven. Instead, he hadn’t even finished his sandwich.

Okay, she was _really_ worried.

So she made up her mind.

“Come on,” she said, prodding Nick with the folder.

“What? Where?”

“This way.” She opened the service stairwell door and started down the concrete steps. Then it was through a door on the ground floor, to the right, down a little used hall to their destination.

“The boiler room,” said Nick. “Charming. Why, now?”

“Not the boiler room.” She opened the door to Records, making a quick sweep to ensure that nobody else was taking the room for its primary if unspoken use, hiding.

Nick looked around the long, cramped space packed with file cabinets and boxes. It was a badly lit and faintly suspicious place. Sometimes Judy thought about Clawhauser being stuck in here during that dark time that she was always going to have to live with. About the only thing you could say for Records was that he would have had the occasional company of whoever came in there to avoid responsibilities or coworkers for a short time.

“Are we here to look for photos of young Bogo?” asked Nick, raising the lid of a coffee-stained box and peering inside.

“I'm pretty sure that would qualify as assisted suicide.”

Around a corner formed by endless rows of shelves, Judy found a pair of chairs and a desk that had surely be in the building as long as Bogo, and which had been clearly repurposed for killing time. The trashcan shoved underneath the table was a chronicle of different officers’ snacks, and the desk had more than one old pack of cards in its drawers.

“A study in mammals whose taste is all in their mouth,” Nick said, sorting through the pack of cards. “Wolf ladies, polar bear girls, hippo chicks, antelopes that aren’t Gazelle. . .”

“Any bunnies?” Judy said dryly.

Nick grimaced. “The sarges are going to pay. And then they’re going to pay some more.”

Judy agreed. Before Nick, she'd probably have filed a complaint, because that sort of thing  _really_ didn't belong in the workplace. But Nick had taught her that honest blackmail or extortion was more sporting. Somehow. Everyone seemed to agree with him, at any rate. 

He tipped the hippo pack out of its box and started shuffling it. The look he slanted at Judy was part impressed, part worrying-what-she-might-do-next. “Should I be keeping an eye on you? You might give the Chief a heart attack if your little remarks keep escalating.”

She hmmm'd. “I thought he needed some perspective.”

Nick snorted, a smile tugging at his expression. “That’s one way to get it. He’s probably wishing he could go back to the day when paw-holding and murder were the worst things he had to think about.”

“Another job -- well, done.” That was one of Nick’s expressions that she’d picked up. His smile gained a little more ground.

“All right,” he said, starting to deal out the cards in a game of solitaire. “Why are we hiding in here?”

“Couple of things. First. . .” She flipped open the file and scanned the documents tucked inside. “Not much in here. Dr. Snowden hasn’t signed off on anything yet, and the coroner hasn’t finished the autopsy report. ‘Cause of death isn’t immediately apparent,’ is all he’s saying yet.”

“There was no blood,” said Nick. “That I saw, anyway. He looked. . . fine.” His expression turned ironic. “Though clearly that doesn’t count for a lot.”

“What did you notice?”

“Todd found him inside the vent. Said he smelled him.” Nick’s ears tucked down a touch; he laid a ten of paws down on a jack of tails with clear nonchalance. “Didn’t like admitting that.”

Judy watched him put a three of paws to the side and lay an eight of hearts on a nine of clubs. All the things she could think of to say sounded empty or foolish, as platitudes always did.

She drew a card off the stack he still held in his paw -- seven of claws -- and set it down on the eight of tails. “But he didn’t smell blood or anything?”

“No. Said he just smelled him in the vent, where he shouldn’t have been.”

“Did the security footage show anything at all?”

“Not a damn thing,” he said wryly, putting two cards to the side. “Did you get out of Haraka that they don’t know where the tech’s gone?”

“Yes.” She propped her chin on her paw and watched him progress a couple more cards. “Why did you ask Mrs. Moldwarp about the ribbon?”

To her surprise, his ears dropped and he scowled. He pulled them back up and tried to smooth out his expression. “Something Aurelia said last night. The Under King is interested in the new mayor. I didn't know they elected their kings. . .”

Judy blinked. “You think the mole king has something to do with Mr. Moldwarp’s death?”

“Hardly seems likely, but you know how I feel about coincidences.”

“You might’ve mentioned it a couple of times.” _Don’t believe in them any more than honest politicians_ , he was fond of saying. After famously solving the case involving dishonest politicians, they’d solved more than a few cases because Nick didn’t believe in coincidences.

“We should talk to Aurelia,” she said, trying not to be too obvious about watching him.

His sigh made his whole long, lean body droop. “The thought had occurred. Like food poisoning.” He tossed the last two cards onto his scrap pile and started gathering up the failed game of Solitaire. “There’s. . . something else,” he said, concentrating on the cards as he shuffled them together.

Was this why he’d been acting weird? She told her heart to stop picking up its pace. It didn’t need to act odd just because Nick was. “What?”

“I. . . saw someone. Up where the elevator cables connected to the wall. I think someone cut them.”

Judy blinked, then sat up straight. “You think someone tried to kill us?”

“Yeah.” He set the neatly stacked deck on the desk and slouched back in his chair, crossing his arms.

Judy processed this. She didn’t ask, ‘You’re sure?’ because Nick wouldn’t have brought it up if he wasn’t. Nor was he paranoid. The simpler explanation for the elevator’s fall was age. He’d know that.

“But that can’t been why you’ve been acting funny all day,” she said, which hadn’t been what she’d intended to say at all.

Nick’s answering look was an interesting combination of sardonic and fond. “I tell you someone attempted murder on us, and that’s your concern?”

“Well, it’s why I brought us here.” They both looked at the mouldering collection of old files, the water spots on the ceiling, the scantily clad hippo card deck. “Grizzoli’s probably going to avoid us for a while, but cubicles aren’t good for any kind of privacy.”

“Guess they should've come down here to look at their magazine,” he said.

“That would make it even creepier.” She made a face. “Looking at it out in the breakroom is. . . _really_ not appropriate, but at least there it’s clearly a joke.”

“Point,” said Nick. “Now that you mention it, I never want to come across someone in here reading the kind of magazine they’d read in here.”

“They’re lucky it was me who walked in, not the Chief.”

“Trust me,” said Nick. “They’d have preferred the Chief.”

She remembered the look on their faces. “Point,” she agreed. “And you? What’s bothering you?”

He fiddled with the hippo card deck. His ears were tucked down close to his head and he was staring rather more fixedly at the hippo wearing a tiny bikini than he would have otherwise.

“Is there anything I can do?” she tried.

“. . . no,” he muttered, hunching his shoulders.

“All right.” She waited for something else, but when he snapped off one corner of the card, said, “You’ll tell me if there is?”

His eyes darted her way and then back to the hippo. His expression was as tense as his shoulders, which were tucked up so that they were almost touching the tips of his ears. He nodded.

“Good.” She closed the Moldwarp file and pushed herself to her feet. “How can we get in contact with Aurelia?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a really long time since I read Sharon Creech's book _Chasing Redbird_ , but I remember the main character's uncle, Nate, chasing the ghost of her aunt Jesse, his Redbird.
> 
> ETA: FANART
> 
> http://secret-soup.tumblr.com/post/143311255336/claps-hands-hey-are-you-reading-dreams-of-steel
> 
> i'm still screa mi n g


	7. Koslov's Place

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annnd here we have "The Fifth Elephant" stuff. Along with major influences by P.G. Wodehouse - but since Wodehouse already influenced Pratchett, I'm just keeping it all in-house*. 
> 
> Koslov comes from the Art of Zootopia book, which I don't have, but thanks be to people who take pics of that stuff and toss it onto the internet ♥︎
> 
> *motherfucker, was that a pun??

The first thing Nick did after leaving the sanctity of Records was complain to himself that he did not want to get in contact with Aurelia. The fact that it had been his idea made it only more annoying.

The second thing he did was call Finnick, who didn’t answer. Nick left a message, which he normally wouldn’t have done, because Finnick was of the general opinion that returning messages was for losers. But if Nick called him repeatedly, Finnick would break his neck. His voicemail promised bribes.

He and Judy spent the rest of the afternoon working on their preliminary report of the Moldwarp case.

Nick was relieved to focus on the details of a dead mole, considering the alternatives: near-death experiences and Judy’s attempts at a heart-to-heart, each of which were likely to induce cardiac arrest. But two slim strips of silver lined the infinite clouds: the ceiling hadn’t come down on their heads in Records, and she had let her inquiries drop for the present. He’d never been more thankful for Judy’s obtuse streak.

Snowden’s snippish reply to Judy’s email was eloquent of her ongoing soreness at Todd’s messing around with her crime scene: “I’ll let you know when I have something that needs your expert attention.”

Luckily, Zootopia’s federal database was less inclined to hold a grudge.

“He immigrated to Zootopia seven years ago,” said Judy, scanning the document on her computer screen. “He never applied for citizenship, though, only residency.”

“Birthplace: White Talon. That’s. . .” Nick typed it into Zoogle and whistled. “We were right on this much, at least. Any further north and he’d be summering at the pole. And any higher and he’d be breathing stratosphere.”

“Only the wife and son are listed as family. . . but he had a sponsor for residency. Desmond Herrington--”

“ _Herrington_?” Nick pushed his chair around to read over her shoulder, even though he knew what he’d see. Judy wouldn’t get a detail like that wrong. “Shit. That’s one of Koslov’s aliases for doing above-board business. Well. As above-board as he ever gets.”

“ _Koslov_ sponsored him?” Judy cast the monitor a sharp look, as if expecting it too had gangster ties. “Ms. Haraka said he was only working for her for five years. Do we want to assume he was doing work for Koslov in the missing two?”

“I would rather not assume that if it involves Koslov, but it seems a pretty safe bet. Which means talking to Koslov.” He scowled at ‘Desmond Herrington’ printed on the screen as innocently as a politician shook hands. “His sense of humor is as dumb as he is crooked.”

“At least he hasn’t threatened you recently,” Judy said sympathetically.

“There’s the silver lining. I knew that on balance of probability, there had to be one.” He checked his phone, which had no calls from fennec foxes or otherwise, not even a spam text. “Looks like Aurelia will have to wait. Tonight, we’ll be talking to Koslov.”

* * *

Koslov was one of Mr. Big’s cronies. He kept a restaurant in Tundratown, called _Koslov’s Place_ in a testament to his mental sophistication. The beet stains on his kitchen walls, which gave the appearance of a bloodbath that hadn’t been properly tidied up, were testament to his sense of subtlety and humor. If Nick had to take a stab at guessing what Moldwarp had been doing for Koslov, he’d hazard it had something to do with diamond smuggling, Koslov’s stock in trade.

(Given what the beet stains resembled, and given Koslov’s sense of humor, Nick would rather not think about taking stabs at anything.)

He and Judy clocked out at 5:30 on the dot, saying no word about their planned excursion to the lair of a polar bear crime boss. Everyone knew about Nick’s very useful connections, and though in the spirit of pragmatism they pretended they didn’t know a thing, Nick (and the Chief) preferred not to advertise.

The rain had decided to give them a reprieve from soaking. Nick didn’t hold a lot of hope that it would hold off for long; the sky was much darker than it should’ve been at 5:30 that time of the year, the air misted with moisture thrown up from the asphalt by passing cars. Lights gleamed softly in the semi-dark, in blurred swatches on the road.

“I know it’s going to be a pain in the tail,” he said, “but knocking on Koslov’s door wearing ZPD sweatpants probably isn’t the way to swing this. We should probably. . . what?” he said, becoming aware that Judy was tugging on his sleeve.

“You left Finnick a message, right?”

“Yeah--”

“Looks like he got it.”

He followed her line of sight to a familiar van with tacky art larger than life on its side panel.

“Now _that_. . . is weird,” he said.

“Why? You wanted to talk to him, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, but for him to just show up? There’s no bribe big enough.” He’d suspect the van had been stolen if it wasn’t impossible to drive without your face, which is what Finnick would take off anyone who tried. “Come on, let’s go see what he wants.”

A few feet away from the van, the passenger side door opened. This was only odd for a second; in the next, Aurelia was hopping down onto the sidewalk and looking like she’d prefer to sock someone in the neck. Nick felt he’d been signed up as her number one candidate.

He stopped, eying her warily -- leaving ‘balefully’ to her. She and Chief Bogo must have got their angry stares from the same shop.

“Okay, what the hell,” he said.

“This wasn’t what you wanted?” Judy asked.

“There’s no way they’d come just because I _asked_.”

“You’re right about that,” said Aurelia. “You’re lucky I don’t sock you in the neck, Nicky. Hi, Judy,” she said, with markedly less hostility, though she immediately returned to Nick with a dirty glare, as if afraid that, should she take the stink-eye off him for a second, he might get the idea that she wasn’t as ready to sock him in the neck.

“Hi,” said Judy, waving a little.

“This is a lot of ire over one voicemail,” Nick said, resisting the urge to put Judy between him and Aurelia. Mostly because he couldn’t see a casual way to do it.

“Forget your goddamn voicemail,” said Aurelia. “Why am I seeing _this_?”

She thrust a smartphone in his face, the screen showing a paused Zootube video of him shaking the mayor’s paw. It was clearly some newsreel footage from that morning. Nick was honestly bewildered.

“You came all the way here to yell at me about a Zootube video?”

“Don’t pretend you’re denser than a brick sandwich,” Aurelia said. “Though I admit this--” She pointed the phone at him in a way reminiscent of his accusing sandwich in the breakroom. “--makes a nice Exhibit A. Shaking paws with Stoneclaw? Did you not hear anything I said last night?”

“You didn’t say a damn thing last night,” Nick said. “You were cryptic, and then you left.”

“No, I--” Aurelia paused, as if pulling the conversation up in her mind and running through it. “I told you Stoneclaw was dangerous,” she said, though with slightly less pissed-off certainty.

“You told me no such thing.” He crossed his arms. “You said -- when I mentioned us getting a new mayor -- ‘That’s gone all the way up the Spine. Even the Under King knows. Everyone’s got their eye on this one after what happened with the last one.’ Not a syllable was there about ‘Watch out for that damn panther, and don’t you dare shake his paw.’”

Aurelia blinked. He could feel Judy watching him too. From inside the van, Finnick said, “Computer memory, Ray. You forgot since you been away.”

“Well,” said Aurelia, recovering, “that _was_ the warning.”

“That’s not a warning,” said Nick, “that’s cryptic cross-talk.”

“I. . .” Aurelia almost looked at Judy; he could tell by the way she stared fixedly at his own face. “ _May_ have forgotten. Well, I didn’t know you and Stoneclaw were going to be _shaking paws_ the next morning.”

“I’ll make sure to give you my schedule from now on,” he said. “Particularly on events _I_ wasn’t expecting.”

“You could’ve mentioned you were going to be at the inauguration. Presumably you were expecting that. Instead of rambling about--” She stopped again. Nick was grateful for her tact, which annoyed him, as he wanted to be wholly annoyed with her.

“Maybe we shouldn’t fight about it on the sidewalk?” Judy said.

“Stop making asses of yourselves,” Finnick agreed from inside the van.

Aurelia turned the Bogo-Grade dirty look on him, but said, “Fine. _In_ ,” she said to Nick, in that ‘unless you want to get it in the neck for real’ voice.

“I don’t see why I should,” Nick said, wanting to sock _her_ in the neck more than a bit. “I don’t see why the hell you came all this way over something so idiotic.”

Something soft and warm pressed against his elbow; Judy’s paw. “Let’s just get in the van for now, okay?” she said, sounding so reasonable and agreeable that he had to fold his ears down and comply.

He and Judy climbed into the back and picked their way over Finnick’s old beer cans and bags of nuts and strewn pieces of clothing to the bench seat near the front. Aurelia had ascended to the passenger’s seat and was clearly trying to compose herself. She had the opportunity while he and Judy dug out the seatbelts.

“All right,” she said. “So it seems the warning about Stoneclaw. . . slipped my mind.” (Nick snorted; Judy nudged his foot with hers.) “I rescind my threat to sock you in the neck -- unless you do something else that warrants it,” she added darkly.

“This fight looks like it’ll go down even better than the first one,” Finnick said.

“I still don’t see that it’s any of your damn business,” said Nick to Aurelia.

“Tell him what you told me,” said Finnick, as if it didn’t matter to him if they fought all night or dropped dead, but, since he was there, felt he might as well contribute.

Aurelia frowned at him, but said to Nick, “I told you everyone was watching Stoneclaw. That’s not a spotlight you want on you.”

“Everyone?” Judy asked. “Or someone specific?”

Aurelia hesitated. The fog of Nick’s aggravation finally parted enough for him to have a clear thought.

“Does this have anything to do with the old Under King dying?”

Aurelia blinked. “How’d you find _that_ out?”

“We’ve got a dead mole. Name’s Moldwarp. And nobody knows a damn thing about the poor guy.” He rubbed a paw across his muzzle, feeling a headache coming on. “We were on our way to talk to Koslov.”

Finnick snorted. “That asshole can barely find his tail with both hands and a map.”

“He sponsored Moldwarp’s residency into Zootopia,” said Judy.

Aurelia was shaking her head slowly, but not in negation. “Look. Up in the Spine, things are changing in a big way. The new Under King. . . well. Of the two contenders for the throne, she was the more moderate--”

“She?” said Judy.

“‘King’ is just a title to them. Some of the moles aren’t happy -- they wanted the more conservative candidate.”

“How conservative?” Nick asked.

“The kind who honestly thinks that coming up above ground is practically sacrilege.”

“You mean that’s not just hearsay?”

“Not for the deep-down moles.”

“Would it make you ‘not a real mole’?” Judy asked slowly. “To come up above ground, to those moles -- to, say, live in Zootopia?”

“As I understand it,” said Aurelia. “Why?”

“The dead mole -- he had a son,” Nick said. “The mother said he ‘broke with them’ for not living like real moles. Supposedly he went back home.”

Aurelia frowned. “You said ‘Moldwarp’? That’s not a mole clan name. It just means ‘mole’ in the old language. If they moved here and changed their name, and the son got hold of deep-down politics. . . How did the father die?”

“Still don’t know,” Nick muttered. “Coroner hasn’t signed off on anything yet.”

“But you want to talk to _Koslov_? That’s a thin line, Nicky.”

“Actually might go better if they got nothing solid to accuse him of,” said Finnick.

“We’re just asking for some information on what Moldwarp might’ve been doing in Zootopia,” said Nick. “He was working at the Museum of Natural History. I don’t know what could tie Koslov to a bunch of Bronze Age pots.”

“You might find out the hard way,” Aurelia said. Then she sighed. “Well, it’s a good thing I brought this stuff, then.”

She reached down and pulled up a tattered black shopping bag. “You can’t show up at Koslov’s Place wearing -- that. Why are you wearing that, anyway? I wouldn’t think the ZPD would want two of its most famous officers walking around in that gym room getup.”

“Long story.” Nick frowned as Judy accepted the bag with a _thank you_. “Wait, why did you bring clothes?”

“I was going to take you to Vince’s.”

Nick flattened his ears and adopted Aurelia’s determinedly-not-looking-at-Judy bit. “A _fox bar_?”

“I didn’t want anyone to bother us,” Aurelia said sweetly, as if it would have been the worse for whoever tried. “But I guess Koslov’s it is. You can tell us the long story on the way.”

“Friday night to Tundratown in rush hour.” Finnick gunned the engine, which backfired, shooting them out into traffic and just missing taking the front end off a Pawnda Accord. “In the rain. You bet we have time for a long story. Hope one a’ you is paying for my gas. And buying me a stiff fucking drink.”

* * *

Judy had wondered more than once if Finnick drove such a big van because it allowed him to muscle his way down the road, not unlike Chief Bogo in a room of regular-sized mammals. Finnick’s van was one of those old kinds like her dad had on the farm, the kind that could take a hit from an oncoming freight train with only a dent. Other cars had to slam on the brakes to avoid winding up a mess of parts strewn across the road.

“It’s not just the moles, though, is it?” Judy asked Aurelia as Finnick navigated through traffic with blissful indifference to road conventions. “Watching the mayor?”

“I wish it were,” Aurelia said. “The moles are usually more concerned with themselves.”

“‘Usually’? So not anymore?” Nick asked.

“No. Now there’s. . .” Her lip curled, showing her teeth. “Baron.”

“Who?” Judy glanced at Nick, who didn’t seem to register the name any more than she did.

“Wolf,” said Aurelia. “One bite away from crazy. He’s the old pack leader’s son.”

“This is up in the Spine?” said Nick. “The wolves still live in _packs_?” He said it like he might have said, ‘What do you mean there’s no coffee?’

“The Spine is not Zootopia,” said Aurelia. “The wolves still live in packs, the moles don’t want to come above ground, and you wouldn’t find a buffalo like your police chief if you looked all winter. Which I wouldn’t advise, because the winter kills. If it doesn’t get you, the wolves might. You’ve got to be looking out for yourself.”

Judy wondered what the state of bunnies was up there, and then figured she could probably guess. If the wolves still ran in packs, she bet the bunnies kept well out of their way.

“Baron’s father is getting on,” said Aurelia. “Soon he’ll be gone altogether. It. . . isn’t something Fang Forest wants to happen. I came back because I didn’t want to be trapped up there when things finally go from bad to worse.”

“How much do the wolf packs control?” Judy asked, surprised.

“Well, that’s the thing,” Aurelia said, sounding both weary and cynical, not unlike Nick. “There used to be quite a few of them, each with their own territory. Baron’s been. . . consolidating.”

“Let me guess,” said Nick, matching her for weary cynicism. “Knocking off the competition?”

“Sometimes. Others . . .” A shadow shifted across her face, not the trick of a street-lamp passing by the rain-flecked window. “He has this game, called the Hunt. It’s not the kind of game you want to play. When his father was running it, sometimes you could win -- there was a big feast, honors for the winner, even a bit of gold. With Baron. . .”

Judy’s fur prickled, but she didn’t ask for elaboration. She didn’t like what her own imagination could conjure up, and she doubted the reality would be any better.

“That part of the Spine hasn’t got a unified government like Zootopia,” Aurelia said, crisp as she changed subjects. “The wolves have always ruled the wolves, the moles the moles, and everyone else did as they saw fit.”

“Baron’s changing things again,” Nick said, as if he didn’t have to guess.

“Sounds like a great fucking place,” said Finnick, ignoring the blaring horn of the giraffe bus he’d just cut off. “If you wanna wake up one morning without a throat.”

Aurelia only gave a passive shrug.

“As a matter of fact,” she said, “I’m curious about what the mayor’s going to do with all the political unrest.”

“That’s over five thousand miles away, though,” said Nick.

“The moles have been trading with Zootopia for a long time,” she said. “If Baron has his way, that’ll stop. He _hates_ Zootopia. The deep-down moles aren’t radical _enough_ for him.”

“You don’t think he had anything to do with Moldwarp dying?” said Nick, as if he could hardly see how.

“Assassination isn’t Baron’s line. He likes to go for the kill himself. And Zootopia -- he’d never wage war on it himself. He’ll just terrorize his own corner of the world. Makes him feel powerful,” she said flatly.

“So other mammals are curious as to how Stoneclaw’s going to handle international politics?” Nick asked, his eyebrows angling down.

“Wouldn’t you be,” said Aurelia, “especially if you were a piece of international politics yourself?”

“I still don’t see what that has to do with us,” he said. “You just said Baron doesn’t deal in knocking people off from afar.”

Judy glanced at him. She’d definitely noticed that he wasn’t telling Aurelia about the attempted murder. She’d have to ask him about that later.

She would have felt she was missing something unspoken if Nick had taken Aurelia’s point. On the other paw, Nick’s stubborn attitude might have suggested he _did_ see something in what Aurelia was saying, but was choosing to put back his ears and dig in his heels. Nick was a virtuoso non-cooperator when he really applied himself.

“Being linked with Stoneclaw isn’t something you want,” said Aurelia.

Nick’s stubborn expression didn’t change. “You keep saying that, but I don’t really see why.”

“For God’s sake, Nicky,” Aurelia snapped. “We’re _foxes_. We don’t mess around with politicians, mayors, _police_ \-- it never goes anywhere good!”

The rain drumming on the roof of Finnick’s van, the thump of the wipers, rushed in to fill the sudden absence of their voices. Aurelia looked away, glaring out the window. Finnick, whose right ear Judy could barely see around the edge of his seat, said nothing. Nick, his arms still folded, his ears tucked back, had traded his stubborn mask for one that was cool and distant. Judy didn’t know how to feel, except sad. She wanted to touch him in some way, but she felt it wasn’t the right moment. She felt, somehow, that this was something he needed to handle himself, in front of Aurelia if not Finnick as well.

“You know,” Nick said, “I looked in the mirror this morning and saw the same old face I’ve always seen. It was distinctly a fox’s face.”

“For God’s sake,” Aurelia said again, still glaring out the window.

“I don’t go around fucking forgetting I’m a fox,” he said. Judy kept her eyes on him, because looking out the window would be cowardly; as if she was ashamed. She wasn’t. “I’m not a goddamn turncoat because I don’t hustle popsicles any longer. If you think I cried tears of joy after that panther _deigned_ to shake paws with me, your powers of observation aren’t up to scratch. Watch the fucking _video_ again and tell me how I was falling all over myself to let down the fucking team.”

“Thank you for the suggestion,” Aurelia said, her voice as wintry as the snow now pushed around by Finnick’s windshield wipers. “That won’t be necessary.”

Finnick slid the van into an open spot on the road and shut off the engine.

“We’re about a block off,” he said, as if the air wasn’t thick with ice that had nothing to do with the plummeting temperatures outside. “You two better get on the new duds. I’m fucking starving and I don’t want to wait on your slow ass, Nick.”

“Yes, because my beauty ritual is so consuming,” said Nick, rolling his eyes. But Judy could tell he was still angry. The feeling was as tangible as the clouds of their breath already forming inside the van.

Finnick and Aurelia stepped out onto the road, to give them (though mostly Judy, she was sure) the minimal privacy afforded by changing in a van with only one other person instead of three.

Aurelia had included clothes for Judy as well, a drapey gray dress that was just a little too big. Judy wondered where she’d got it; it was far too small for Aurelia. But she’d included a set of pins to fix the sizing difference, and a black coat that probably did belong to her, because on Judy it was a couple of sizes too big. But the effect wasn’t bad, and the coat hid the pins in the dress, so that overall the look seemed deliberate.

And the dress was. . . well, a little scandalous. The main thing was that as it was gray, and so was she, it seemed. . . not entirely to be there. She would definitely not have felt comfortable wearing it around her family, because they’d make a fuss. (Her sister Mabel would’ve taken pictures and pretended to cry that her little sister was “all grown up.”) But at Koslov’s, well. . . gangsters were different. There were rarely any bunnies there, and she’d prefer not to look _cute_.

The memory of that bunny fetish magazine intruded with the sudden force of Francine accidentally sitting on her. She scrubbed the thought out with a bit of mental bleach.

“I can tell you didn’t pick those clothes out for yourself,” she said once she’d turned back the coat’s sleeves and buttoned them into place. Nick (who’d changed on the other side of the tattered vinyl bench seat, with some swearing and damning of the scattered beer cans) was fussing with the high collar on the black turtleneck he was wearing. He looked quite nice, but not like himself. “They match.”

“Ha ha,” said Nick, though the sharp cant of his ears relaxed a fraction. “If Koslov’s doing a comedy hour, we’ll get you up on stage -- _what_ is that?”

His look of horror pretty well matched the one he’d worn that morning on waking up. Judy frowned, because she wouldn’t have bet _Nick_ would fuss.

“Oh, come on, you’ve seen me in a dress before.”

“I am going to have _words_ with Aurelia,” he said, and in the mostly black clothes Aurelia had provided, he looked a bit menacing -- if she hadn’t known he was Nick, and easily distracted by sweets or a bad joke.

She patted his shoulder. “Sure thing, Slick.”

She opened the back door and hopped down to the snowy road. She could handle snow, but she’d prefer to get indoors as soon as possible. It was frigid and rough on the pads of her feet.

Aurelia had been talking to Finnick, her tone quick and tense; he was leaning against the side of his van, unfazed. As soon as Nick and Judy appeared, Aurelia whisked her tension out of sight.

“I was hoping I’d got the sizing more or less workable,” she said, smiling at Judy. “It’s not terrible, I hope?”

“It works just fine, thank you,” Judy said sincerely. “I appreciate you thinking of it.”

“Heh,” said Finnick, smirking at Nick. “Aurelia’s been trying to dress you for years. Guess she finally got her opportunity.”

Nick made a rude gesture, which only made Finnick laugh at him more. Aurelia ignored them.

“Ladies first,” she said to Judy, and gestured for them to head off to Koslov’s.

* * *

Nick would have liked a short time alone so he could go quietly to pieces. He had been having a very trying day, with a lot of nasty revelations and near-death experiences, and now Aurelia had given Judy that _dress_.

It wasn’t that the dress was particularly scandalous on its own. Hanging on a rack, it probably just looked like a normal gray dress. The neckline wasn’t dangerously low, and the hem came to Judy’s knees.

The thing was that it was _gray_. It was almost indistinguishable from the color of Judy’s fur, which gave the appearance of it almost not being there. It invited not only second looks, but thirds and fourths, of a very _keen_ sort, to see if what you thought wasn’t there really wasn’t. And even though it _was_ , that suggestion. . . lingered.

He wondered where the hell Aurelia had got it, and then what the hell she’d been thinking. Thirdly, he wondered how to ask Judy if she really knew what she was wearing without sounding like an ass or a pervert.

Only Judy was swinging open the back door of the van and hopping down to the street in The Dress and the long black coat, and aside from wishing for that quiet moment, he was hoping she didn’t freeze. Aurelia had packed for Vince’s, which was decidedly not in Tundratown.

He _almost_ hoped that someone at Koslov’s Place would start something, because he found himself really wanting to sock someone in the neck. The desire was testament to the badness of his day. Judy was the one who went in with guns blazing; when confronted with sticky situations that threatened dismemberment, icing, or any number of unpleasant roads to death, he preferred to talk his way out.

It was still an “almost,” though. The way this day was going, he’d wind up a greasy smear on Koslov’s restaurant wall, quickly freezing over.

Koslov’s Place was a towering building about three-quarters roof and one hundred percent covered in snow. A glowing red neon sign attracted the eye even through a blizzard. Rain froze as it fell over Tundratown, but with the dark clouds overhanging the city, the only spots of brightness were the frosted windows and the sullen glare of that sign.

No one stopped them coming inside and shaking the snow off their coats and paws. Koslov’s Place was a restaurant; it wanted people coming in. They wouldn’t get stopped until they tried to get closer to Koslov.

The inside of the restaurant was scarcely warmer than the outside, and reeked of beets. Nick despised beets.

A polar bear showed them to an ice-crusted table and handed out menus that Nick knew heavily featured beets, with fish thrown in for variety. Koslov _did_ serve good fish. This would have been another strip of silver lining, if Nick didn’t think it’d be more in keeping with his day for the herring to give him salmonella.

Finnick wasted no time in ordering a beer straight from the hostess. “And don’t bring it in no sissy glass,” he said. “I want to be able to drown in it.”

“I see Gregor,” said Judy, glancing past the menu over to a door that they all knew led to the upper levels. “Koslov’s got to be here, then.”

“I’ve been thinking,” said Aurelia. “I should go up with you.”

Nick scowled at the selection of beets on the menu. “We don’t need an entourage.”

“I _meant_ Judy and me. You and Finn stay here.”

“What?” Nick did not yelp. Finnick socked him hard on the arm for no good reason. “ _What_?” he hissed at Aurelia, resisting the urge to rub his arm. Oh, who was he kidding. That hurt, and he was going to rub it.

“She’s got a point,” said Judy, considering Aurelia, who blended against the snowy interior. “The borscht sounds interesting,” she said in the same tone as a wolverine waitress came over with Finnick’s beer.

“It stains my fur, I’m afraid,” said Aurelia.

“I haven’t dealt with Koslov nearly as much as you have, Nick,” Judy continued after the waitress had padded off, “but I can’t suppose he’s going to be thrilled to talk to us. We’re probably not supposed to know about Desmond Herrington.”

“Koslov certainly won’t be thrilled by two cops in his lair,” Aurelia said. “Even if you _are_ off-duty. I’m still a crook. Outside of Zootopia, of course,” she added smoothly.

“He's also got those foxy massueses,” said Finnick, already halfway through his beer.

A funny look passed across Judy’s face, like she was remembering a magazine Nick did not want to remember either.

Aurelia shrugged. “Any edge is a good edge.”

“Okay, Nick?” Judy asked.

Nick wanted to say there was no way in hell it was okay, but he didn’t have a reasonable objection. “ _Aurelia can’t be trusted_ ,” wasn’t good enough, because it was based on The Dress, and everyone would just roll their eyes and/or sock him again. “ _I don’t like the look of that shifty bastard at the bar_ ,” would fall just as flat, since practically everyone at Koslov’s looked shifty at all times, with Judy being the notable exception. “ _I relate to the agonizing stare he’s giving his whiskey and soda_ ,” would involve explaining his inner turmoil, which was simply not happening.

He just felt. . . jittery. That was natural after the day he’d had. But you couldn’t convince others to listen to a jittery feeling played for you and you alone.

“Nick?” Judy leaned forward. Aurelia was silent, gazing off across the bar, and Finnick was draining his beer with quiet consideration. “Would you rather go in my place?”

“No.” He tried to unlock his shoulders, which kept trying to pull up to his ears. He was grateful Judy was keeping her tone straight and sensible. “Koslov will be more cooperative if I’m elsewhere.”

“Glad we got that settled,” said Aurelia, sliding down from the polar-bear-sized booth. “Shall we?” she said politely to Judy.

As she slipped down to the floor, Judy slid her paw across the table and touched Nick’s, for a moment. She didn’t look at him, though, and it almost seemed completely casual, even accidental. The surge of affection it provoked was dizzying. He didn’t trust himself to move.

He watched her follow alongside Aurelia, who was chatting about something he couldn’t hear, up to Gregor’s position by the door.

Finnick whacked him on the shoulder with his beer glass. “Flag that waitress for me, loser,” he said.

Nick grunted. “If you’ll stop fucking beating me up.” He got the waitress’ attention and let Finnick order his second beer with an injunction to just keep ‘em coming.

“I’d say ‘let Ray get it outta her system,’” said Finnick as he waited for his beer to arrive. “Only it looks like you got something shoved up your system, too.”

Nick scrubbed his paws over his ears. “Someone tried to kill us today. You can say I’m not feeling _swell_.”

“Huh.” Finnick took his second beer from the waitress and waited till she’d left. “You didn’t mention that to Ray.”

He hadn’t, and he didn’t quite know why. It was instinct from the Better and Smarter Nick that hadn’t been around much today. “She was yelling at me enough over Stoneclaw. I didn’t need to get it in the other ear.”

“Like I said. Just let her vent. You two came up on the TV and she wasn’t prepared. Mighta been okay,” he said pensively, “only after that she had to watch all those videos of Judy slamming rhinos and timber-wolf jackasses. Think it made her nervous you’s gonna get mailed to your ma in a matchbox. She’s always been used to you staying _outta_ trouble, not running after Cottontail right into it.”

Nick blinked. “Why was she watching videos of _Judy_?”

“Just pop up one right after the other, don’t they? Decide what the hell you gonna eat, I’m fucking starving. I want to get this shit going.”

Nick ordered something randomly fishy off the menu for himself and something with beets for Judy, since she didn’t object to that kind of thing. After they’d given the waitress their orders, Nick resumed his bewilderment.

“But she didn’t have to _watch_ them. Besides.” He scowled. “I don’t see why she should care if I get mailed home in a matchbox or pasted up between two boards.”

“That’s from you being an idiot,” said Finnick, almost done with his second beer. If Nick lived off sugar, Finnick was pure alcohol. “Ray’s always been fucked up. Which you’d know if you wasn’t so busy being your own kinda fuck-up you didn’t have time to notice. She’s used to breezing into town and there you are, right where you always been. Then one day she breezes back and you gone off straight with a rabbit. Guess she’s looking for a reason why.”

The waitress brought him another beer while Nick tried to sort out how to feel about this caustic if masterful summation of his character. He wondered how Judy was doing, with a sense like icy claws trailing up the back of his neck.

“You ask me,” Finnick said, emerging from his third beer, “Ray’s afraid the reason you let her keep coming back all those years and treating you like shit is because getting treated like shit is your thing. She’s afraid that’s what’s got you hooked up with Judy.”

“What?” Nick blinked at Finnick, who just kept draining his beer with a ‘punch my give-a-shit card’ expression. “That’s lunacy. Judy doesn’t -- ” He paused, then grimaced. “She saw the fucking press conference, didn’t she? From the Nighthowler case.”

“Yeah, but it ain’t just that. I told her she was barking up the wrong tree, and she told me to get fucked.” Finnick shrugged. Nick cynically thought that had anyone else said that to Finnick, they’d have found themselves digging their teeth out of their ear.

“If she’s going to give Judy some -- some kind of _talk_ ,” he said, “like it’s any of her fucking business--”

“Judy can handle her,” Finnick said. His expression lit as the waitress dumped their plates on the table and took off again. “Only one who can’t handle Aurelia,” he said as he dug into the fish, “is you.”

Nick gave his plate a sour look, but he picked up his herring and bit its head off. Someone had tried to kill him earlier, but he’d have to be a bonafide corpse before he didn’t eat a meal that was put in front of him.

“Anyway,” said Finnick, “you oughta be thanking her, getting Judy a dress like that.”

Nick almost swallowed a fishbone. _I’d like to kill her, is what_ , he thought.

“Though it didn’t seem to put no dents in that foul mood a’ yours,” Finnick said, inhaling half a helping of saffron rice in one go.

Nick just muttered, no real words. Finnick shrugged, and got another beer.

They lapsed into their dinners, Finnick hoovering his way across his plate, Nick eating without tasting much. He noticed absently that the polar bear of the anguished whiskey and s. had left at some point. No one cared that Nick and Finnick were taking up less than half of a booth five times their size. That was fine. So was the lack of talking. The day felt like it had been a million years long. Turned out it was exhausting, being in love with--

He froze, and then realized it hadn’t been the thought that froze him: it was a crash from upstairs and the crack of a gunshot.

He'd shot out of the booth and halfway across the room before he realized he’d reacted. Gregor was braced in front of the door to the upstairs, his gun out, but he wasn’t going up; his job was to block the door.

“You stay there, fox,” Gregor said, waving the gun at Nick as he skidded to a halt.

“Gregor,” Nick growled. “I am not having a good day. I am, in fact, having a fucking _awful_ day. You do not want to make my day worse.”

Gregor pointed the gun at him with an expression of grim boredom. Nick noticed the wolverine waitress standing frozen nearby; she mustn’t have been working there long. She was clutching a tray with another beer on it.

Nick snatched the beer glass of her tray and smashed it against the bar. It shattered ineffectually, leaving him holding only the handle and soaked with beer.

Gregor snorted. “What was that supposed to accomplish?”

“Oh, just a distraction,” Nick said.

Gregor’s sneer suddenly froze, then melted off his face like an ice sculpture in the path of a blowtorch. His eyes darted down in horror to Finnick, who had his claws pinned on a very important and delicate place. Finnick smiled upward, nearly all teeth.

“I’m sure you can appreciate the gravity of your situation,” said Nick as Finnick applied the lightest pleasure. Gregor swayed backward, as if trying to get those terribly sensitive parts of his body out of the way without moving any other part. Finnick took a step forward, and Gregor oozed backward with a whimper.

“Great,” said Nick. “My day is a _little_ improved by our mutual understanding.”

Then he wrenched open the door and dashed up the stairs.

“No sudden moves, Buttercup,” he heard Finnick’s voice fading behind him. “You ever heard the sayin’ ‘All trees is felled at ground-level’? No? How’s about ‘A polar bear’s nuts comes off real fuckin’ easy’?”

Shouts and bangs thudded from a floor above. He leapt up the final flight in two bounds --

\-- and was nearly crushed by one ton of falling polar bear and Koslov’s office door.

Nick leapt off the stairs and rebounded off the wall, a move he’d learned from Judy. Rabbits were better at it; he managed not to get flattened, but his descent was not graceful. He tumbled over the bear and nearly broke his neck.

“Oh, I didn’t mean to hit him that hard!” he heard Judy say nearby. He pulled himself rightside-up as she appeared in the broken doorway. An adrenaline-fueled glance told him she looked perfectly fine; probably better than himself, after he’d just peeled his face off the carpet.

“Nick? Are you oka--oof!” she said, because he’d grabbed her in a hug. It wasn’t a conscious decision. His brain had engaged without him: Judy All Right Needs Hug. And his brain seemed to know what he needed, for her warm, living, breathing presence was almost restorative, as if it was draining out of him some dark, ugly, toxic thing that had been living under his skin. His heart was still driving a hundred miles an hour, but he no longer felt as if a cracked weight was pressing on it. Only Judy, pressing against his chest and his arms and the edge of his jaw.

“Now this is interesting, little fox,” said Koslov’s deep voice above his head. “How did you get past my Gregor?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks be to my beta, sageandginger, who isn't responsible if I effed anything up ♥︎
> 
> Also, if you want an idea of the kind of getup Nick was forced to wear in public: http://laventadorn.tumblr.com/post/143598902468
> 
> Not an aloha shirt in sight; no wonder he was having trouble coping with everything. 
> 
> ‘All trees are felled at ground-level’ is a dwarf-saying featured, I think, in Pratchett's "Feet of Clay."
> 
> As a final note in this slew of chapter notes, y'all are amazing?? and I love you ♥︎ ♥︎ ♥︎
> 
> ETA: Just when you thought you were SAFE from the author's notes--!
> 
> http://secret-soup.tumblr.com/post/143612109451/me-dont-you-literally-have-like-four-pieces
> 
> secret soup drew this and my feels are outta fucking control


	8. Broken Earth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> end-of-semester work always gets me in the neck, but now i'm recovered! so without further ado, if you're still reading, here's another chapter :)
> 
> eta: well, maybe not completely recovered, i forgot to name the chapter. oops. fixed that!

“Gregor,” said Aurelia with every appearance of pleasure. She had to look up a long way to meet Gregor’s eye, but she craned her neck as if the strain was a delight. “It’s been so long, my dear.”

Nick always said that Koslov hired for the strength of ten, and he didn’t mean brains; Gregor fit snugly into that mold. He blinked down at Aurelia, then shifted his stare to Judy.

“Huh,” he said. “What, did that massoose place run out of foxes?”

“She’s a new hire,” said Aurelia, sliding an arm around Judy’s shoulders. “Koslov said he was open-minded.”

Judy wished her own mind was not open enough to remember The Magazine. When Finnick had mentioned foxy masseuses back at the table, she had suffered some glazing flashbacks. Her only consolation had been Nick clearly suffering the same.

Gregor shrugged as if to say, ‘What do I care what gets my boss going,’ and opened the door. “Go on up.”

“Thanks, sweetie.”

Aurelia steered Judy inside. As they climbed the stairs (which were polar-bear sized), Gregor snapped the door shut behind them.

“How many foxes would it take to massage a polar bear like Koslov?” Judy asked, her breath clouding the air.

“Now, that sounds like an off-color joke,” said Aurelia, smirking. “Let’s think of a punchline and tell it to Nicky; see what his face does.”

Judy thought of Nick’s expression when she’d walked into the break room and encountered the magazine open on the floor. “I might have seen it already.”

Once in Koslov’s upper hall, Aurelia led the way to his office. Judy had trained herself to let others take the lead when dealing with what Nick referred to as ‘the criminal classes.’ “You have the subtlety of an oncoming freight train, Carrots,” he would say, and then, with some relish, provide footnotes about her threatening Mr. Big or kicking Doug out of his train car before driving it off and exploding it. “You don’t know how to schmooze,” he’d say. “When schmoozing is involved, you should delegate to me -- just as I’ll delegate the threatening and muscling to you.”

And since it was clear that like Nick, Aurelia was a Grade-A Schmoozer, Judy would let her lead. Until she noted the right moment to threaten or muscle, naturally.

Aurelia rapped on the glass of Koslov’s door.

“Yes, what?” His deep voice rattled the glass pane.

Aurelia took his impatient bark as a cordial invitation and let herself in.

“Koslov, honey. It’s been too long.”

Koslov was seated at his desk, squinting at a ledger open in front of him, reading glasses hooked on the end of his snout. He peered down at Aurelia and Judy, much as Gregor had done. It was a long way down, even if he was sitting.

“I do not have the memory of calling for my massage,” he said. “Is Madam Renard using the bunnies now? I was not informed. Perhaps it is quicker?”

Judy’s mind plunged to unfathomable places again. Aurelia, friendly and unruffled, said:

“It’s _Aurelia_ , Koslov honey. I introduced you to Greta.”

Koslov adjusted his reading glasses, leaning forward. “Ahh yes. You must forgive me, you are all small and white and looking much the same, yes? Greta, she is a fine marvel. But you I have not seen in the ages.”

“I’ve been away.” She glanced around the office, which was bordering on uncomfortably cold, as if it were a private resort open for her delight. “May we have a seat, Koslov sweetie? You wouldn’t keep two fine ladies like ourselves on our feet for a chat, would you?”

“Do we chat that you have been away?” Koslov gestured at a frost-crusted couch. “I am not sure why I will be interested.”

“Oh, it’s very interesting.” Aurelia somehow managed to slide up onto the couch. Nick could do that, too; it was something in the way they could move. Judy, well, she hopped.

“Very interesting,” Aurelia repeated. “Seeing as there’s a dead mole in town -- someone from the Spine, where I’ve just been.”

Koslov’s eyes did not look kinder through the lenses of his reading glasses. He wasn’t ice-pick sharp, like Mr. Big, but he wasn’t mentally negligible either. He let the silence grow heavy. Nick would have piled words on it, but Aurelia sat quietly waiting while Judy watched them both. Koslov hadn’t recognized her, perhaps because to many mammals, all other breeds look the same. He didn’t think she was important, because bunnies weren’t. She thought it would be best to keep that impression.

“A mole,” he said.

“I know you take them on, sometimes,” said Aurelia. She leaned forward slightly, tilting her head. “You know Tundratown is the best place for news from the north, and you’re the best place for news in Tundratown. Where else would I go, Koslov honey?”

“I care not for the moles,” said Koslov, almost pensive. “This you ask me, and this I tell you. But it is my turn to ask -- what care you for moles? Why is important for you to ask the questions of this one dead mole?”

“Because things are happening in the Spine,” said Aurelia, her glib, flirty manner melting to reveal something more serious. “I want to know if this is . . . one of them.”

“Even though it is happened in Zootopia,” said Koslov, raising his eyebrows.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

He studied her a moment longer, then shook his head. “I care nothing for the moles. If information you are wanting, more shall I need than an old favor.” He waved a paw far bigger than either Judy’s or Aurelia’s head. “Go, please. You do not look like you need to be thrown out.”

Judy weighed her options. Koslov was clearly not in a helpful mood. He rarely was, unless the help you wanted was some trouble with your spine. Revealing herself as a cop was unlikely to make him more cooperative, at least with anything that didn’t involve getting her joints out of joint. Perhaps --

“His name was Moldwarp,” she said as Aurelia slid down regally from the couch.

Judy saw the recognition in Koslov’s face. He reached up and took off his reading glasses, and without them his face became a great deal less kindly. From the corner of her eye, Judy saw Aurelia’s white fur bristle, but she didn’t break eye contact with Koslov, even as her heartbeat picked up its pace.

Koslov stood to his full height. It was like watching a glacier shift. His head almost brushed the ceiling. The floor groaned as it took his full weight.

“You will leave, little rabbit,” he said, “and you will take--”

Something hit the door, shaking the frame and, it felt to Judy, the whole wall. Shejumped up to stand on the couch; Aurelia darted behind it; Koslov turned like an advancing iceberg as the door hurtled open.

Judy saw the gun in the paws of the new polar bear; so did Koslov -- hard to miss when pointed at his gut. He ducked as the first shot exploded the air, shattering a picture frame on the wall.

Judy leapt onto the back of the couch and propelled herself at the right-hand wall. Koslov barreled at his attacker, grappling with his wrist to shove the gun away. Another bullet fired shook the ceiling as Judy rebounded off the wall in a move Nick called the Ricochet Rabbit and kicked the attacking bear in the head.

Koslov slammed into the other bear’s gut; Judy wrenched herself around the bear’s wrist with the gun, spinning into a roundhouse kick that caught him on the underside of his chin and sent him staggering into the door. The glass pane cracked and the whole door was ripped off its hinges as he crashed to the floor and lay stunned.

Judy looked at the broken door and the glass littering the carpet. At least half of that had been Koslov's work, but she didn't think he'd be pleased at such wholesale property destruction.

“I didn’t mean to hit him that hard--” she said.

Behind Koslov, the painting of an arctic sunset came free of the wall and crashed to the floor. Koslov adjusted his suit jacket, giving the mess a considering look. At least he hadn't opened a window and chucked Judy out.

Jumping down to the carpet, careful to avoid the glass, she saw the unexpected sight of Nick picking himself up off the floor next to the unconscious bear.

“Nick? Are you oka -- oof!” she said, because he’d grabbed her in a tight hug.

His breathing was rough, but she didn’t know how long the altercation had lasted, but it had seemed a mere blur of moments; he must’ve been off like a shot. She brought her paws up and placed them on his sides, feeling him relax. He was warm -- the only warm thing in that stupid freezing building, it felt like.

“Now this is interesting, little fox,” said Koslov’s deep voice above their heads. “How did you get past my Gregor?”

“I threatened him with bodily harm,” said Nick, releasing Judy. “I heard a gunshot.”

He took in the destruction, including Aurelia now peeking out from behind the couch. “I wasn’t inclined to wait to be informed what the trouble was.”

“Clearly, the trouble was gunshots,” said Koslov, brushing a bit of plaster off his shoulder.

“Yes, silly me,” said Nick. He narrowed his eyes at the heap of bear on the floor. “That was the guy nursing the whiskey and soda.”

“What?” said Judy, confused for the first time.

“At the bar. He left. I’ll hazard a guess this is where he went." He must have been feeling a bit better, because his irony was back on form.

“Gregor,” said Koslov as his hench-bear lumbered into the hall, panting and looking a little wild around the eyes. “You let this little fox threaten you?”

Gregor glanced at Nick, who smiled, mostly teeth.

“I am sorry, sir. He was very convincing,” said Gregor.

“Get rid of him. No, _him._ ” Koslov pointed a claw at the bear on the floor, who was stirring. “Leave the fox. We shall have words later. You and I,” he added, making Gregor’s face fall. “The fox and I shall have words now. Someone shall come to clean up later. I do not wish to be disturbed.”

He dropped into his desk chair, which creaked alarmingly, as Gregor and other goons dragged the stunned bear away. Ignoring the broken door, Koslov looked at Nick and Judy, and then at Aurelia, while Judy hoped that despite failing to clarify "cleaning up later," Koslov did not mean for someone to be tidying up their insides.

“So, these are the cops,” he said. “Oh yes, everybody knows Wilde. The bunny I did not recognize before. Now, I remember. So, the cops wish to know about the mole Moldwarp.”

“We’re trying to figure out who he was,” said Judy. Her heart rate hadn’t quite calmed yet, but she kept her voice steady. “His information says he was sponsored by one of your contacts.”

She assumed that was diplomatic enough, because Nick, his paws tucked into his pockets, gave her a gentle elbow nudge; not admonishing, but supportive.

Koslov watched them. Judy kept eye contact. Nick’s ears were tucked back, but not laid all the way down. Aurelia stayed in the background, silent and, Judy presumed, wary.

“For your service,” Koslov said, without the welcome that had characterized Mr. Big after _he_ ’d nearly killed them, “I shall tell you -- and then you will go, and you will not return. To do with this, I want nothing. You will keep it that way.” His brow lowered as he leaned forward, his chair giving a low, dark groan. “You will mention not my name or it will not go well for you. Is this plain?”

“Yes,” said Judy.

“Crystal plain,” said Nick.

Irony not being a subject Koslov had studied in depth, he let that pass. “His name, he wanted changed. In the mountains of Fang Forest he was born. The name of his family was the Broken Earth clan. And that is all I know.”

Judy knew she was pushing it, but she said, “And why did your contact sponsor him?”

“I have told you all,” said Koslov in a voice like building thunder. “You will leave, now.”

The pressure of Nick’s elbow increased: a clear signal to embrace discretion as the better part of valor.

“Thank you, Mr. Koslov,” said Judy, as if they were shaking paws, not leaving on the edge of a black look.

Aurelia, though lagging behind the sofa, was the first out the door without even seeming to hurry. Nick propelled Judy a little ahead of him, as if afraid she was going to turn around and pester Koslov one final time. She’d have _liked_ to, but Koslov’s code only went so far. She’d helped him out, but he wasn’t the type to extend help beyond his inclination even if she saved him from a falling meteorite.

Downstairs, she noted an absence of Finnick. Glancing at Nick, she received a shake of the head.

Out on the street, snow was falling more heavily from a churning sky. They headed toward Finnick’s van, where the fox himself was sitting with the window rolled down, blowing cigarette smoke into the icy night.

“Good to see Koslov didn’t tear you limb from limb,” he said as Nick wrenched open the passenger door; flakes of ice broke off. Judy would be glad to get back someplace warm.

“He refrained,” said Nick. “Must be some magnanimity in his curdled soul. All right.” He grabbed the edge of the front seat, where Aurelia had resumed her place and was staring out at the snowy street. “Who’s the Broken Earth clan and why does it make Koslov twitchy?”

Finnick’s enormous ears swiveled up like satellites; he glanced at Nick, then at Aurelia, but that was his only sign of amazement that anything could rattle Koslov.

“That was the clan of the late Under King,” said Aurelia quietly.

Judy blinked. Nick’s grip on the front seat tightened, the vinyl creaking.

“You’re saying we’ve got a _dead relative of a king_ in our morgue,” Nick said. “Oh, that’s just--”

“Yes, I am.” Aurelia turned to look at him, her expression sharp, almost -- feral. “And that is why I am going to ask you a final time to stay. Out of it.”

Nick stared down at her, the slant of his ears fully horizontal. Judy kept quiet. She’d asked Nick, last night, why Aurelia kept coming back. She’d had an inkling, and now, well, she knew she’d been right. She just wasn’t sure if Nick knew.

“. . . Judy and I have got to get back to the station,” he said.

Aurelia turned her head away, staring out the window again.

"We’ll make our own way there,"he said to Finnick. "You just drank five times your body weight in beer.” 

“Right,” said Finnick thoughtfully. “I’ll just be sleeping here, then, on this patch of road. Be fun.”

“I’ll drive,” Aurelia said, her voice as icy as the softly falling snow.

When Nick opened the back door and titled his head for Judy to step down, Aurelia didn’t stop them. Finnick leaned around the passenger seat to make a face at Nick. He waved in response to Judy’s good-bye, and then she and Nick were standing alone among the snow drifts as Aurelia kicked Finnick’s van into gear and trundled off.

Nick let out a breath that traveled his whole body. His shoulders slumped and his ears folded down. He rubbed his eyes.

Judy hooked her paw around his. His ears lifted and he looked down, nonplussed. The expression on his face sent a bloom of warmth through her chest, and she felt the impulse to kiss his cheek.

“Let’s go tell Chief Bogo,” she said. “The politics are his game, not ours.”

“. . . Right,” said Nick. His paw returned the pressure on hers and some of his tension released into the icy air. “We’ve got that to be thankful for, at least.”

“Just gangsters and attempted murder and actual murder -- that’s our lot.”

“Like I said.” The corner of his mouth turned up, like the glint of the streetlight on the snow. “Count our blessings.”

* * *

In the Chief’s office, Judy laid out the facts without any of the detours or embellishments that Nick favored, and that always made Bogo especially ornery.

Really, the facts were slim: they’d discovered the dead mole was Erwin Moldwarp; a wife and estranged son survived him; he was a member of the Broken clan, sponsored into Zootopia by Koslov; and Koslov would rather break their necks than talk about it. They didn’t know how Moldwarp had died, where the missing tech had gone, what was behind his wife’s assertion that she’d known he was dead, or what, if anything, his death had to do with the changing of the Under King. Nick had been feeling an itch even before Aurelia had come scattering dire predictions.

He and Judy needed someone who both knew the moles and would talk to them. Unfortunately, as he well knew, most people didn’t like talking to the cops, especially the kind of mammals who didn’t have any kind of standing with them.

And if two tough customers like Aurelia and Koslov didn't want to talk about it . . .

“The dead relative of a king,” said Bogo once Judy had finished. “Flat” didn't do justice to his voice; you could’ve shaved your claws with it.

“A former king,” said Judy. “That’s what we were told. We haven’t had a chance to corroborate. Koslov wasn’t at all disposed to have anything to do with it, sir.”

Bogo groped at his forehead as though he’d like to open the top of his skull and massage his frontal lobe. When he spoke, he ground the words between his teeth. “If this is true . . .”

Scandal, politics, headaches, and a lot of dealing with the new mayor: Bogo’s least favorite activities, only possibly ranked before having a conversation with Nick.

“Who told you?” Bogo asked, as if hoping their source was untrustworthy.

Aurelia wasn’t the stuff Knights of the Round Table had been made of, but she was good on information -- when you could get it out of her.

“One of my contacts who’s recently been up at the Spine,” said Nick.

As he'd expected, Bogo regarded him with a jaundiced eye. “And if you’re prepared to submit information from this _contact_ , I can _safely_ assume you are also prepared to submit their name and relationship in writing?”

“Yes, sir.” He hoped that wasn’t laying it on too thick.

Bogo rotated the jaundiced eye between Nick and Judy a few times.

“I will bring this to the mayor’s attention,” he said, making it sound more like a threat than a favor. “Corroborate the mole’s identity. Tomorrow -- it’s bloody late and I’m not looking at you two all night in those clothes.”

If Nick hadn’t felt fairly jaundiced himself, he’d have saluted. As it was, he just followed Judy out the door.

“Dinner?” she asked once they’d said their good-byes to Clawhauser and stood on the station’s front steps. Nick remembered that she hadn’t eaten anything at Koslov’s. He hadn’t eaten much, either, before gunshots had put him off his fish.

They caught the train at City Hall Station and headed out to the Marshlands. Dressed as they were, they were netting more stares than normal. Nick couldn’t read minds, but he didn’t need to. That gray dress was most definitely a date dress. In their uniforms, they were clearly the fox and bunny cops, but out of them, they weren’t as recognizable. To most mammals, other species looked the same. Right then, he and Judy looked like they were on a date.

Ignoring the stares, he said, “I think Clawhauser and the Chief both live at the station. I mean, have you ever seen the place without one of them there?”

Judy looked thoughtful as the train swung around a bend. “It would explain why I never see Clawhauser _stocking_ the fridge. The food is always just there.”

“And it’s a Friday night. You’d think, if one were to have a life, this’d be the time to have done.”

“Right, like we do, at this moment. Heading away from the station after reporting on the results of our investigation.”

“All right, so there’s a flaw in my argument. One can clearly have no life and not live at the station.”

The conversation lagged as the train rattled on. The silence wasn’t uncomfortable.

Nick took the time to sort through things in his head. There was a lot to sort, a lot he wasn’t sure about. He supposed he’d have a hell of a time falling asleep tonight. That was when you were at the greatest mercy of the avalanche of thought: in the dark, everything quiet, trying to calm your mind, and the mind having none of it.

The train decanted them at the cleverly named Marsh Station -- the brains behind that might also have coined Miners’ Way -- along with a herd of antelopes who looked like they were in the midst of a bachelorette party, and a pair of young hippos out for a night of romance. To the south, city lights flickered through the misting rain.

One of the hippos produced an umbrella and shielded their partner, who snuggled up. Nice and romantic, Nick observed, with a bit of Bogo’s jaundiced eye.

Since Judy’s umbrella had been the mine shaft elevator’s true victim and romance was nowhere on his horizon, Nick pulled a daily broadsheet off the rickety newspaper stand and unfolded it over his and Judy’s heads.

“So, how are we going to check out Moldwarp’s pre-Koslov-made identity?” he asked as the rain pattered on the newsprint. “Seeing as our two contacts, such as they ever were, have come over all coy. Talk to Mrs. Moldwarp again?”

“That was my thought. She wasn’t forthcoming, but I still think she’s the best place to start. We can see if there are any organized societies in the city for moles, but. . .”

“If Aurelia and Koslov are already so jittery, we might not want to broadcast to the mole community at large.”

“Right. You know Koslov and Aurelia better than I do, but it was _crystal plain_ that neither of them wanted anything to do with it.”

“Politics wouldn’t bother either of them. I know Aurelia had her hackles up about Stoneclaw, but. . . the life Aurelia leads, it’s. . . more on the edge than ours. A wrong step _can_ kill you. Not like threatening a mob boss with a police investigation,” he said, because he couldn’t help himself.

“Yes, that was suicide -- you’ve said. Aurelia seems to think that getting mixed up with Stoneclaw and the politics of the Spine is suicide, too. And if we think someone tried to kill us. . .”

Nick finished the thought: “She may not be wrong.”

They walked in companionable, or perhaps thoughtful, silence behind the happy hippos for a block or so.

“You didn’t tell Aurelia about the elevator,” said Judy eventually.

“Mmm. That ride cost us your umbrella,” he said. He felt Judy’s stare weighing on him, and sure enough, when he glanced at her she was giving him the visual equivalent of a tapping foot. “Hey, she’s not telling me everything, so I thought it better not to tell her everything.”

“You don’t trust her?”

“Aurelia’s not very trustworthy. She’s a career criminal,” he said, in case he hadn’t made it plain before. “The places she goes just don’t have the best regulations.”

The happy hippos were headed for the same ramen shop. Nick was glad he and Judy ate there all the time, so they wouldn’t be mistaken for being on a date. He was in no mood for any possible attitude about it. He had no way of knowing if Judy had picked up on the dropped stares and sidelong looks -- sometimes Judy was hard to read -- but he didn’t want to see her reaction in any case.

Because it was Tsumiko and Genda, he and Judy only got friendly hellos and some chat about the rain. They ordered large bowls of ramen and looked through the damp broadsheet while they waited. Nick said the little league team on page two looked like a bunch of pills; Judy thought the Catholic church might start damning souls if it didn’t get the funds to save its dying organ; and they turned page three, whose print had run, into a game of ad-libs, filling the gaps with the most absurd words and phrases they could think of.

For the rest of the night, he knew they’d let Moldwarp and Stoneclaw, Aurelia and Koslov, the Spine and all the politics alone. It was the kind of thing you had to do to maintain your sanity. 

As much of it as he had left, he thought, as Judy hit herself in the nose with a noodle and went momentarily cross-eyed and, without thinking, he reached over with a napkin and patted at her face.

"What?" he said, trying not to have a fit of the vapors when she blinked at him, confused. "I thought I'd ease some of your burden, since eating noodles seems to be a bit much for you tonight. Long day?"

"As a matter of fact. What a gentleman," she said, and flicked a green onion at him.

* * *

Back at Nick’s apartment, properly filled with ramen, Judy took first crack at the shower because Nick acted deaf when she told him he could go first. She’d thawed considerably since Koslov’s, but it was still nice to warm up under the hot water. She didn’t take too long, though, or use too much of it. By the time she turned off the taps, rain was pouring down outside again.

Nick was lounging on the couch poking at his phone when she joined him in the living room wearing her pajamas. He looked odd in black, for though he’d tossed the jacket onto a chair, he’d kept on the rest of the ensemble. And his expression as he scrutinized his phone was far more seriously serious than his usual.

But when he looked up, his familiar sly insouciance slid back onto his face. ““Blessed be the dry mammals. Here’s hoping we don’t--”

“Ohh, no you don’t,” Judy said. “The last time you said that, an elevator came down with us.”

“That was the attempted murder. It had nothing to do with me inviting peril.”

“Well, _considering_ the attempted murder, perhaps we shouldn’t invite any extra peril.” She hoisted herself over the back of the couch -- with some effort; it _had_ been a long day -- and dropped down on the cushions next to him. “You didn’t tell the Chief about that, either.”

“I figured we should unload mysteries on him at a fairly sedate pace.” He locked his phone and pocketed it. “You all finished in there? Then I’ll be off. I need to get out of these matching clothes before it becomes too much for my psyche to handle.”

Once the bathroom door slid shut, taking him out of sight, the apartment fell into quiet. All she could hear was the rain. Nick had drawn curtains across the large picture window, and the lights were low. It was peaceful, cozy . . . at least, it almost was.

A year ago, she’d have been a lot _more_ disturbed by someone possibly out to kill them. This wasn’t the first time -- there’d been a stretch (at a time when Nick had been in the Academy) when Judy had, in fact, practically been living at the station because she’d been too scared to go home. She supposed she’d gotten a lot better at compartmentalizing, or perhaps had developed some sort of mental callous against danger. . .

She definitely needed it now. If Mr. Moldwarp was important enough a mammal for both Koslov and Aurelia to want nothing to do with the investigation. . .

She unlocked her phone and opened Safari. Into ‘search,’ after a few trials and errors on the keyboard, she typed ‘Broken Earth moles.'

A webpage came up immediately: “Society of the Broken Earth.” She clicked.

‘ _We the fossorial society of the Broken Earth record this as our statement. . .’_ And then -- what? The words seem to slide out of focus, like her brain was refusing to have anything to do with them. Maybe she was tired . . . though “exhausted” would probably be more just. . .

Then the phone screen went black and seemed to swim before her eyes. Panic prickled before she realized the Broken Earth webpage had vanished because her mother was calling.

“Hi, Mom,” she said, accepting the call and feeling silly. _Maybe not as sanguine as I thought . . ._

“ _Hi, sweetie_ ,” her mother’s voice came over the line. She sounded awfully awake. Was this how Nick felt when Judy was buzzing around him before ten in the morning? “ _We saw you on TV!”_

So much had happened that day that it took Judy’s sluggish faculties a moment to remember why she would’ve been on TV.

“ _You and Nick both looked very_ spiffy _\-- maybe a bit solemn, but still very nice_.”

“Thanks, Mom.” Judy found herself grappling with the conversation in the same way she’d struggled with the webpage. Her head felt like it had been turned into a goldfish bowl, filled with water and a pair of lazily swimming fish. Exhausted, all right.

“ _Honey, are you all right? Judy?_ ”

“Sorry, Mom. Long day.”

“ _Oh, of course._ _You’re at home, I hope? Staying dry?_ ”

“Yeah, we’re fine.”

“ _You’re still at Nick’s, then?_ ”

“Right.” She tried to smother a yawn.

“ _Judy, sweetie, you know you . . . don’t have to hide from us, I hope?_ ”

“Huh?” she said blearily.

“ _You and Nick. You’re -- dating, aren’t you_?”

“What?” She wasn’t sure it didn’t come out as a squawk. All of a sudden she felt -- not alert, exactly, but like someone had set off a firecracker just below her ear: dazed and looking around for the explosion.

“ _Well, dear, even considering the --_ unusual _nature_ \-- _it’s really very obvious. You don’t need to pretend there’s water damage at your apartment just to let us know you're staying over with him. Your father and I talked about it, and, well, he also cried a lot, but don’t let that get you down; you know how emotional your father is_.”

“Right,” Judy said again. A few more goldfish must have been added to the water in her head, because it suddenly felt very full in there.

 _“We just don’t want you to feel that you have to keep secrets -- either of you. Your father does agree, and by the time you’re visiting again, he’ll have stopped crying, I’m sure_.”

And then Judy heard the bathroom door rattling open. She may have started having a heart attack, or was that just a paralyzing feeling of relief that she could end this call?

“Mom, I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”

 _“Of course, honey. We love you. Give our love to Nick._ ”

“Right,” she said a third time, which seemed to have become the extent of her vocabulary. “Love you.”

She hung up and stared suspiciously at the phone. Had she dreamed that conversation? Had it been orchestrated as part of a sinister part to make her doubt reality? Had she really heard --

“The mother Hopps checking in?”

Nick’s voice behind her made her lift about half a foot off the couch. She’d already forgotten he was out of the bath.

“Whoa,” he said once she’d come back down. “You okay?”

“My parents think we’re dating,” she said, and then wondered if she’d meant to say that. She adopted Bogo’s earlier tactic of forehead rubbing in an effort to clear her head.

She should  get up and go to bed before this day got any wilder. Considering everything the day had thrown at her, if it _did_ get wilder, she’d probably wake up in outer space.

“Do I have water in my ears," said Nick, "or did you just say--”

“My parents think we’re dating?”

“That’s what I heard.” Nick made a show of rubbing his ear. A peculiar expression was on his face. “Why do they think that, now?”

“I'm not sure. She just said it was obvious. And my father, apparently, is still crying.”

“Oh,” said Nick in a tone of voice that she didn’t like, because it was the voice he used when something was bothering him and he wanted to pretend it didn’t.

Damn, she shouldn’t have mentioned the crying; that had been insensitive. If her brain hadn’t been hijacked by a goldfish colony, she’d have thought better of it.

“Mom said to give you their love,” she said.

Nick was silent a moment: examining at her as if trying to work something out. “You set her straight, of course.”

“You came out of the bathroom. I just said goodnight.”

“So your parents . . . still think we’re dating.”

“Undoubtedly.” It was suddenly a bit too much for her to look at him. She rubbed her nose and hoped it didn’t look like she was trying to duck. “I think I need to go to bed before my brain just stops working and I pass out.”

“Right.”

“That’s my line.” She tried smiling, but Nick looked -- well, she didn’t know. She was _much_ too tired. “You’re not going to keep me up by insisting you take the couch, are you? Because after today, you need real sleep, not couch sleep.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

She supposed that was as good as she was going to get.

She burrowed under the covers and snuggled into the pillow as Nick rustled around on the edges of the room: brushing his teeth, plugging in his phone to charge, stubbing his toe on the edge of the bed and cursing . . .

A lot had happened that day, a lot that she would’ve expected to keep her awake; but the soft patter of the rain and Nick’s presence buffeted her to the peaceful edge of consciousness. That cozy feeling that had eluded her alone in the living-room found her at last. She slipped into the formless sea of sleep on the sound of Nick wishing all bedsteads would go to hell and take their pointy metal feet with them.


End file.
